1st FEBRUARY 2007

Beijing is bigger, and i feel smaller than ever. a mix of colour communication and something about laughter as a universal language. 4pm GMT ihave no idea what time it is.

FEBRUARY 2nd 2007

1st things first. the fat is in the fire. and all of a sudden a dialogue begins. someone aksed me what day it was, and with a smile i had no idea. dumplings. green tea, and paintings of the moon in full. Response. Reaction. Adaptation. Condition. Environment. Connection. Compromise. and understanding through repitition.

all amount to something that is good.

FEBRUARY 3rd 2007

Woke up and watched the dawn break. sleepless and more awake than ever. A morning mono-printing saving faces, making the most of the warm winter sun. Lunch with Abraham at the indoor jungle restaurant. slowly turning into a dumpling. writing backwards and reading things upside down. "inside outside": the show has begun. Beijing bicycle ride, straight road through vilages and watching alternative realities, each face different and each wearing a smile worth more than gold.

FEBRUARY 4th 2007

Busy Busy Bang Bang. Beijing City Centre. Mono Printing to blur the boundaries between painting and drawing. Bought my Chop, and painting into the night while china wages funny war with fire-works. The man-in-moon keeps me company. Writing backwards making something that is: deliberately Naive.

Head to hand. Kind hearts and saving faces.

FEBRUAR 5th 2007

spring time. the ice melts and the sun is something else. all day drawing and painting. meetings of minds, chinese whispers, and humble where abouts. disconnected and centred, the outskirts of a changing metropolis. "a difference makes people happy" someone said this and it stayed with me all day. more peeking duck, and dinner talks cheap as chips. late night bicycle rides with a belly full of beer. funny how good things taste when they are free. "soften it with an oboe", lucky sevens and heart felt heaviness. unidentified flying insects. ANOTHER WORLD. ANOTHER PLANET.

FEBRUARY 6 2007

flea markets and double dumplings. everything is for sale for the right price. connecting lines and seeing into the future. tea made from flowers and imitation oreo cookies. afternoon sleepy and midnight painting in a wonder warehouse studio.

FBRUARY 7th 2007

Making work with an open mind. thinking backwards and back on myself, re-thinking ideas. The Brut, Raw, thinking outside of boxes and instinctive. Problems with communicating, finding the right colour, then getting home and realising its the wrong type of paint, compromise is the answer to so many questions. working with what you have. Having to remind myself that everything I make i will have to carrry home, so there are limitations, but still, im feeling open to so much, each idea leads to another, action and reaction. China is a painters paradise. so many things at your finger tips. Today i have located a screen print company and tomorrow i take my work to get a run of limited prints. This afternoon my cleaner has been teaching me how to make traditional dumplings, and tonight i am setting the record for most dumpling eaten by a westerner. The gallery is frequented by a variety of folk, artists, villagers, passers-by, and although we are on the outskirts of Beijing I have already met a host of people from all walks of life. Falling in love with mono printing all over again, and painting faces which I'm told are just like the masks of the Beijing Opera. although i insist they are portraits of real people I have met.

FEBRUARY 8th 2007

woke up and got out. alone and on a mission, to take things back and bring things forwards. after doing the do, i ate on the side of the street. A guy who was cooking from a bicycle made me a french style crepe, with egg cracked ontop, leeks and corriander and something i did not recognise, all folded together to create a hot mix of something i find harder to describe, placed in a small plastic bag and eaten in less than a few minutes, while sitting on the curb, watching endless wheels pass by. within 10 minutes i felt sick and the taxi drive home was full of doubt. i was sure to be sick, but held my breath and focussed on the task in hand. Apon arrival i paid the taxi driver and exhaled a giant belch which echoed through the whole city and the taxi driver laughed and drove away (in china burping is seen as a sign of satisfaction, a symbol that you have enjoyed your food) I felt much better, and proceeded to paint all day, collaging pieces of paper and found objects into my body of paintings, which are now starting to look like a family of green and blue with hints of red. This afternoon I took the task of getting screen prints made. After 3 hours of miming and vague translations, I think i got the messages across. Getting to the printer was difficult and involved getting lost down back streets and getting in a car of someone I have never met and will never meet again. The prints will be ready in one week (i hope) and is something i can tick off my list of things to do while in China. Chinese new year (the spring festival) starts in one week, and already the sky is alive with coloured light and heavy explosions. This festival is the chinese new year and christmas combined, and during this time the whole country stops working. During this week, i will work harder than ever, preparing for the exhibition on the 23rd. At the same time as our exhibiton is a smaller group show in a room next door, showing a host of artists from around the world. Today was very productive. I have my hands full, but enjoying every second.

FEBRARY 9th 2007

I have itchy foot. an ancient Chinese disease, red spots itching their way across my soles. Tomorrow I visit a local doctor who will cure this by chopping my foot off with a chop stick. Today was happy-go-lucky, making paintings all day along side this, that and the other. The sky was beautiful big blue all day and the sun was brighter than spring light bulbs, as the sun died down the wind picked up and all night we have had gale force winds talking to us through the studio walls, the winds and fireworks make for a dramatic soundtrack to the makings of what is shaping up to be quite a show.

FEBRUARY 10th 2007

Bad dreams and hungry feet. A day of wondering and walking through art district. the 798. a place of gallery apon gallery, artists make artist do. and inpired, after beautiful welcome and my second coffee in 10 days. afternoon of painting and drawing on paper found canvas. Finding the beauty in numbers and making new words from sounds. Mixing six and seven and finding something that is more than meets the eye. Forget-me-nots and flowers in my tea, the whole place is alive with ideas and passing thoughts that spill into and out of books made by hands.

Tonight I went to the opening of a very lovely gallery space, featuring well known artists from around the world, with complimentary cold meets and cheese. The show was something else, with people painting walls balck and white as some kind of post modern conceptual super-statement. I enjoyed the space but the work left me feeling far too clean and expensive. we then ate with kind hearts, at the oldest peeking duck restaurant in Beijing. The food was too good for words and i was presented the head of the duck, and ate the brains of my feathered friend. I almost ordered fried scorpian, but left this for another night. after dinner the sky was alight with the spring festival fire-works. the Chinese know how to light up the sky.

FEBRUARY 11th 2007

hand-made leather shoes and walking the city streets. finding lost glimpses of a forgotten city. a meeting of minds. something about food tasting better when it costs next to nothing and finding the simplest pleasure in bus-ride conversation. someone else paid my ticket and i sat back and watched a metropolis move into the future.

Followed by another big dinner around a circular rotating table. a dinner party for the Red Gate Gallery. Amazing food in a jungle restaurant (meaning the restaurant is in a jungle, or the jungle is in the restaurant, either way there are giant plants and running water all around, all housed in a giant green house, where they grow their own vegetables. again my drawn and painted faces are said to be like "famous Beijing opera" and now i know why. I ate enough to kill a small dog, and probably ate a dog too. Tomorrow we visit the Greatest wall of all.

FEBRUARY 13th 2007

The Greatest Wall Of All. and seen from space this line is the biggest drawing on planet earth. Someone told me "this wall is so huge, you can see space from here" and I knew exactly what they meant. I didn't feel tired at any point and we walked up hill for 3 hours. it was truly Awesome. Words don't really do the experience justice.

DO NOT FORGET THE FIRE IS HEARTLESS

Some old lady was selling things for tourist, I loved this sign next to her table. I bought a t-shirts that said I climbed the great wall, because I did.

FEBRUARY 14th 2007

Happy Valentines.

FEBRUARY 15th 2007

heavy headed, something north of nowhere north. Empty streets and happy faces. Something from Nothing and thinking inking negative spaces. Bicycle breakfast and watching headless chickens make hungry happy. Cold concrete floors and spring sunshine making China finer and Breakfasts-of-champions. Reading Chess and thinking in backward words. Echos of past and futures, and holding fast to the Tao of Now. Domestic cats and industrial poets. The half way house, and everything defined and quantified in numbers, far from true, I never wear a watch...I couldn't even tell you what day it is.

FEBRUARY 16th 2007

PART ONE:

Lucky Numbers, broken words and unanswered questions. The head is overrated. the real thoughts come from the gut. Kill the heart and body will follow. Words become pictures and a picture tells a thousand stories. sometimes the best words are not said but held tight like a precious stone. Body Language, Sign Language, Universal Language. (if you have to ask the question: maybe you aren't supposed to know the answer.) Automatic, Automatic. so much in one small breath. exhale and the whole room knows what you feel.

"hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil"

On Eating Wild Beasts: They say if you eat dog you will be warmer in the colder months. If you drink snake blood you will be stronger and last longer.

(Last night i ate Scorpion. This has little or no benifit. It means nothing but self destruction and maddness in a man.)

PART TWO:

On Riches and Honor, Poverty and Humbleness:

"If wealth can be obtained justly, even if it means I should become a cart driver, I will do so. But since there is no such way, I will do what I love"

Confucious (551 BC - 479 BC)

FEBRUARY 17th 2007

The Eve of Chinese New year. the egg represents the soul, and everywhere people play with fire like it is a new discovered toy. The whole country is closed. quiet and loud the streets are alive with party funny war zone. With signs that say happy christmas, I feel like I have time travelled. I feel something that is lost. But I'll celebrate for some reason.

"He threw away his hunting knife and went to sit upon the rose of pine. to think about love: his girls bare boddess like a fennel seed, the navel in her milk bun"

Jack Kerouac

Ladies and Gentlemen, A chinese Toilet:

This medi-evil toilet was found at an artist community where I spent the new years eve. An entire town of artists, studios and galleries. Noone spoke any English and my 3 Chinese words didn't get me far, but we all had a great day and ate a feast fit for kings. I ate so much duck I almost couldn't breathe. Check out this spread:

After lunch I caught my breath and we had tea at one of the artists house. They were really great guys, and a few of them are very successful artists, and producing very amazing work. The guy with the mohawk was so funny and his house was very cool. The guy on the far right is a very famous painter. The guy on the far left was our taxi driver.

FEBRUARY 18th 2007

Happy New Year, China welcomes 2007, the year of the pig:

Last night was something else. the whole night was a constant bombardment of bangs and colourfull explosion. for 6 hours (until i slept) and as soon as I woke up, every half second there is a loud bang. it is New years day today and the streets are quiet and people smell of beer and fish. After an amazing lunch I fell asleep by accident reading my new book on psychogeography, I woke up and as I opened my eyes the whole building had a power cut. The lights came on again just as it got dark outside, and already the constant fire-work display has begun. I no longer miss coffee, but no look forward to chrysanthemun tea. (chrysanthemun is a close relative of the daisy, and it taste so sweet).

BANG BANG, children letting off fire-crackers in the street next to my studio. I have a feeling these would be very illegal in the UK.

Chrysanthemun Tea:

FEBRUARY 19th 2007

Another hard day at the office. Making maps of the universe and anatomical studies, not too scale, but accurate de-piction of emotional content and meaning-full representation of human-kind. Drinking tea, and just me. The echos of future shows and big blue bright. Far to big for the frame of a photograph, but saved in time. noone around for miles and for the first time in a while I feel something true to myself. Dirty finger-nails, stained with the ink-of-i-think-of. Starting to think about the 23rd in bigger terms of wall displays and no-longer just the making of, but the post product of a month on another planet spent.

"A man walks down the street he says why am i soft in the middle now, why I am soft in the middle, the rest of my life is so hard. I need a photo oportunity, I want a shot at redemption, don't wana end up a cartoon in a cartoon grave yard."

Paul Simon.

FEBRUARY 20th 2007

although Beijing is very polluted, I still think it has some awesome sunsets, especially in the suburbs, which is where I am living, I really love the way the electrical wires cut across the sky. Last night I took my Bicycle out for a spin and cruised around the local villages. I Love the dirt and grime of these exteriors, there is a real life to all these buldings and the streets, like everything has been made by hand. All so perfectly imperfect.

Tea break over. Back to work, just realised the show is in 3 days. So much still to do.

The first secion of my show is complete. My desk-work-space (which has now moved 3 times) with all my prints, collages and found objects is set up. I really want to blur the space between the finished work and where the work is made. I am getting a little tired of seeing really finished work hanging in really clean spaces. This is my way of being honest about how I think about my work, revealing the many parts that come together to make the final pieces. It is like a big collage or pin board, all my ideas and test-pieces spilled out. I am pleased with how it looks. Just as I finished we had a power cut, so to celebrate we went out for dinner and ate thousands of dumplings.

FEBRUARY 21st 2007

Up at Dawn, to find a thick mist. Very moody with a creepy morning spirit, silent roads blind to other traffic and the sun no where to be seen. Arriving in the old down town to collect this and that and found the other. A street festival of all kinds, fried octipus and grilled sea horses, the streets were alive with people and musical instruments, people on stilts and crowds of smiling faces. The new year festival seems to go on and on, and while some get on with a normal wednesday, the majority seem happy to play with paper birds and deep fried fortune cookies. After a road-side breakfast we went and checked out the Forbidden City. A city within a city, built for the last emperor. The place was extra-ordinary and I was happily lost for 2 hours. Now busy with the show organisation, counting down for the last few days which are more like hours. All good: but I can't help wishing I had myown city.

FEBRUARY 23rd 2007

A Very Private View. Concrete walls and the by-products of my trip. The work installed and ready for the show that starts tomorrow afternoon: here is a sneak pre-view.

FEBRUARY 23rd 2007

The day of the show, and wall was well. A great turn out with something like 75 pairs of eyes. A feast of hand-made dumplings and chinese beer, and an international mix of Austrailian, New Zealand, Chinese, UK, USA, Swiss and miscillaneous passer-bys. The afternoon was warm with spring sunshine and happy questions. I can't quite believe that the resdiency has come to an end. With the show up for a few more days, and last minute things-to-do, it feels like the whole month was wrapped in a tiny fortune cookie. Many great times have been had, and I am invited to a group show in March and an international art fair in May. This trip to China has been most fortunate indeed. enjoy the photos of the public view:

FEBRUARY 24th 2007

Took a trip to the local market, to buy some very old junk and get some veg for lunch. I bought some wooden monkey's and some old rusty lucky coins.

FEBRUARY 25th 2007

Today I took the paintings down and preparing to ship stuff home. The end of a month of constant art making, and now the last few days in this amazing City. Today was overcast and cold. Below is an on-going drawing on our kitchen wall. collaboration with Whitney, a cluster of heads and faces.

FEBRUARY 26th 2007

Lat day in Beijing. An early morning visit to the cental academy of arts, then down town to do this that and the other. A sweet visit to the Red Gate Gallery, and then a hop skip and a jump back to pack my bags and prepare for a morning flight to Shanghai. This is most probably my last journal entry. It has been an amazing trip.