The studio

When I left New York I quoted Frying Pan Jack when he said: 

“…I learned when I was young that the only true life was the life of my brain. So what sense does it make for me to hand that brain over to someone else for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that at the end of the day I would get it back in an un-mutilated condition.”

I recognized the challenge would be to resume my life and still find the capacity to make pictures. Well for the most part I must admit that I have handed over my brain and it has been mutilated. As a teacher the mutilation is both rewarding and done for an honourable cause but mutilated even so. 

So I again left the world of work and lived and worked in Berlin.  The "beauty" of the studio I set up was that it was in the middle of Stasi City the secret secret police "city" in Berlin.  The studio began as barren as the neighbourhood that surrounded it. 

 In time, however, the studio filled up and I even added a chair.

And I returned to Canada and again I feared the admonishment of jack and again handing my brain away and hoping it would not return un-mutilated.  So this year, with my professional responsibilities a little lighter I have given myself over to setting up a place to work here in Victoria.  

I have had a studio in New York and one in Berlin and I have been set aside a small room in my house as a studio in Victoria.  Years ago my daughter told me that turpentine was the smell of work. So I struggle to keep the smell from seeping into the house, but Hannah would say lately it smells like work.