Cathal Lindsay

Paintings, works in progress and the occasional dalliance with generative art.

[itscolossal]

Szilveszter Makó’s Surreal Photographs Reconstruct the Boundaries of Portraiture

[deresjot]

(via Pin auf Calligraphy)

[cathalpaint]

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct..”

Dune -Frank Herbert

There is a feeling of directionless energy within me. I’m going to work my way through it. It’s due to positive changes in my llife. If I'm honest it scares me a little. A sea creature used to the crushing pressure of the midnight zone, I find my self emerging in to the sunlight zone. My form needs to adjust. Adjust to the new currents and pressures. There’s nothing unique in this, I think we all go through the same process.

I think it is the process of change; the energy it takes to put down roots, to stand in place that scares me.

When I put my poor mental health and unhelpful coping mechanisms in the past, I thought my growth was done. Heh it turns out I just cleared the chaff and weeds. Now the growth starts.

Combined with the challenges of the current state of the world and how to help my kids navigate it, it’s a lot. There’s the temptation to retreat to the familiar depths, to allow the weeds to take over again.

I truly no longer want that, but the depths and weeds, would be different this time. They promise. I know I don’t want that, so it’s one eye on my growth, one eye on the temptations and one eye on my mixed metaphors and biblically accurate eye count.

There is no option for me to add alt text so it’s here.

The above image is a fluid composition of text. The text is layered and written in different directions in a variety of media.

Some text is smudged out some is just about legible.

The negative space between unconnected words has been emphasised in places with zinc white oil paint.

I am trying to resolve a tension I see between my ideas, planning and completing a work. They all exist as integral parts of the whole, but not always given the same weight. Final image I just where I stop my process.

This is the thread of the intent of the text on display.

Above is another text composition. The same methodology as the previous image has been used.

The thoughts recored on this were a tangent to the previous image.

Here the thread of thought was information loss and thermodynamics. Just thoughts and wonderings. I gained no answers, I'm hoping my insights are on the way.

The negative spaces have again been emphasised but this time in paynes gray.

Does the process of emphasised negative space reveal what I seek?

The stage I’m at needs a review of my work and a dive into theory. The work will come. I’m thinking of books and visual research essays.

This ramble is long enough so, until next bat-time, adios.

[cathalpaint]

Listen/purchase: Small Portions by Small Portions

[cathalpaint]

On me

I have been very sporadically present on this site. As anyone who looks at it will most likely know me, there’s not much to tell that adds to that. Life has been very intense for the last few years. I lost my footing and fell. My mental health issues that I had no idea were issues came a calling. My marriage fell apart, I saw the woman I loved die a little day by day. I saw her become someone else. (I accept that I failed the marriage and her, but I won’t accept the totality of the blame of the situation. But all that is another bucket of thoughts I’m not getting into today.) My children suffered and needed more support, love and comfort than they were given. I was hit full on by the depth of my isolation and struggled to survive. I followed my heart. I followed my head. I helped my children cope with their immediate grief. I was ostracised by those whose support I could have used. I’m not proud, but glad to have survived 3 attempted suicides. I found security and care and lost it again. I felt heartbreak and grief that overwhelmed, I almost lost the care of my children and was almost sectioned. But I’m still here. Why this post, why now? It’s not all been pain and clouds of sorrow. If you could see my thoughts as I type this. There is a side of me that yells how dare I. How dare I complain when others have suffered more and are suffering more. I accept that they have suffered more and are suffering more, but I’m not in a suffering competition. My experience is worthy as any others. But I digress from my internal debate. I’m writing this for me and to me. It is the 14th of October 2024, and I am alive. I want (no wishes - wishes are for the benefit of the world, if wishes exist I shall not waste them on personal whims.) I want to use this as a journal

. I have been struggling to find a format that works for me. Throughout this whole life, I feel like literal chapters have been closed and opened. Along with the clouds and fogs in my head, I have experienced joys that I think few get to experience. I found the most intense love, I have been so deliriously happy. I have found all my senses overwhelmingly fulfilled. I have been moved to tears and ecstasy by trees in rainy sunlight. UI’m not a spiritual person. I was once, and I can see how some would view these moments as a lifting of the veil. I have experienced a depth of friendship that still seems s to grow. I have undergone therapy that has shaken the very foundations of who I thought I was. Today? I’m growing. Since 2016 my life has been influx. Wall after wall of illusion and revelation have collapsed, and all the things I have done in the past now lie before me as actions. My therapy has allowed me to see the reasons for my choices and actions, and the thing I choose to do. Now I feel like I’m starting over. I try to picture myself younger, my internal vision of myself. It’s no longer there. I am free to be me. However, I no longer have the full motivations for all the behaviours I want. My motivations in the past were never fully for me. They were to gain acceptance and to people please. To escape and not face who ever I am now. So I’m learning to do things again. But for me. And with that comes rebellion and fear. These actions like washing dishes, sweeping floors, self-care even my art, while part of these were completed for me. Overwhelmingly, they were completed for the benefit of others. The art is a different beast. I was away of shutting all of it out and dwelling with in. I wanted love and acceptance. I wanted to feel worth. I was filled with self loathing and anger that I couldn’t love myself, that I was not worthy of that love. So now I am learning how to be loving to myself and how to care for the human I am. I can forgive myself when I mess up as a parent. But I find it difficult to find that compassion for myself. I am full of what if, why can’t I, I should and other judgment thoughts. So the why? I write this as an expression of the past and the current state. It’s not structured well. It’s a brain fart of a mind dump and that okay. It’s ambiguous, as I’m going to put it public. It’s for me, as I know where I have been and where I am. I think I know where I want to be. No, I don’t know where I’m going or how to get there, really. I just know those answers need to be found by doing in the here and now. The past only reveals to me patterns of behaviour that based on escape and giving up of responsibility. Where I am now, is scary for different reasons. What if I die before I get to progress much further. What if I never love again. What if I’m wrong again. What if. What if. My choice is to be compassionate to myself. To take my internal voice and tell it how I want to be spoken to. Setting the boundaries I want. Stern enough to jolly myself along when I am capable of pushing more. Compassionate enough to know when I’m nearing my limit. Focused enough to help me cut the chaff from my behaviours. I want this to be a daily practice and to see how I develop through the practice.

[cathalpaint]

Been a while again

I’m back for a bit. Not making any promises about for how long. I do have access to a garage that I’m slowly getting made into my studio, so hopefully I can get back to painting again. I’ve made some stuff I’m happy with. Happy enough to put it up here.

[cathalpaint]

#Drawing #Sketch #planes

Learning from this week.

[cathalpaint]

I've spent about 7 -9 hrs on this. I'm glad to know that I can still mantain focus for that long. I'm miffed that my arms don't like to be held horizontal for asking as the use to. It makes shading a bit of a pain.

I'm going to watch more of my course and see what things I can glean from it to help me improve on my shading and tonal identification.

The lower jaw still irks me. The proportions are correct, or they seem so. But they are probably off by mils and that has a culminative effect of looking wrong. Anyway, it's the best I can do at the moment in terms of skill and patience.

[cathalpaint]

Statement of Intent v1.0.2

I don’t have a studio, nor can i afford one. I don’t have space. I want to paint, but I have many barriers to that activity. Some self imposed, others imagined, some insurmountable.

I want to finish my MA; I want to move forward, but the barriers remain.

The drawings I make for practice and glitches I create scratch a creative ich but they rarely satisfy.

I made an image today. The image encapsulates what want to explore. Einsturzende Neubauten recorded a soundtrack to Faustmusik a play by Werner Schwab. The sound track was composed with the materials such as tables, pages, books, rulers and writing sounds . I need like Einstruzende Neubauten, to embrace the materals. I must use the mechanisms of writing. The forms and rituals.

Desk, pen, pencil, paper, A4 , words and line . These are my tools, my boundaires. Established in view of my barriers and current limitations.

[cathalpaint]

Horizontal Circular Hue Array

My coding is coming on well, I wrote this as an array, using OOP in processing really really quickly. I’m really practicing the format of arrays and using classes. The more advanceed actually challenging stuff is coming up, using trigononmetery, and creating more complex sketches.

This is my days work. A challenge is to make the bubbles shine, pop and make new smaller bubbles. I’ll work on that.

[cathalpaint]

Just Random Thoughts

I don’t have a central theme to this post. It’s just a musing or a ramble. I like many others have been in lock down and suffering from mental helath issues. I have fourtunately had a good mental health team around me and they have ensured that I am getting medication. The difference a set of good eds makes is unbeliveable. This time last year I was struggling to get up in the morning and then spent the day struggling to think.The meds made me sluggish. The new meds have allowed me to be more motivated and helped to focus on getting stuff done. Like getting on with my coding learning. I had a hiccup with the meds last week and the difference is striking.

I have also cut a lot of social media out of my life as well. I still have profiles, but I have deleted the apps from my phone. This has resulted in me haveing no clue about whta is occuring outside of my curated instagram feed. I don’t get embroiled in any agrugemnets that my head can’t let lie. I feel a sense of guilt I guess because there are things occuring in the world stage which are huge like the ‘Black Live Matter’ demonstrations, the covid response , and lifting of the restrictions. I feel like I should be more vocal about these things and recognise thaat my ability to just turn off socail media, speaks volumes about the level of my ‘priviledges’. Lots of people don’t get to just ‘turn off’ these issues when it gets to be too much. I don’t have much to add to any of the debates as I don’t know enough about the problems. So I’m reading and listening to podcasts, in order to better understand. I try to amke my kids aware of the inequalities in the world, but I worry that I’ll bog them down in the rot and not have anything positive to show them. I’ll bumble and ramble along I guess and make a mess of things here and there, but I hope I remeber to tidy upafter myself and that my actions cause more good in the world than harm. I want to do more than hope. I want to make the world around me, and that spreads out from me a better place. It’s overwhelming the amount to be done. But I will try to take it on piece by piece. I feel that my major contribution will be in how I bring my kids up, and how they then influence the world. I’ve rambled enough here. I’ll shush and things.

[cathalpaint]

Not Pong

Today I put all of my coding knowledge together and coded this emulation of pong. It’s not finished but the difficult parts are done. The bats move and collision detection is sorted. I need to add scoring and to fancy it up with bell and whistles.

I’m on to learning about Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). This is the bit I have been looking forward to. From here I can programme a lot of things. My first goal is to rte code the not_Pong using OOP.

Below behold the game.

[cathalpaint]

A little colour

A more colourful sketch than I have been doing of late.

This uses FOR loops to draw the squares along the x axis; and another to draw the squares on the y axis.

The colour is controlled by the mouse movement. Long details below.

The colour in processing is by default set up as (red, green,blue). It's basically colour mixing with light.

The red component in the sketch is defined by the distance of the x co -ordinate of the mouse minus the x value of the square on the grid it is over , expressed as an absolute. ( which means its a positive number at all times. ).

The green component is defined by the y coordinate of the mouse minus the y value of the square it is over expressed as an absolute.

The blue component is defined by the mouse's x coordinate minus the width divided by two expressed as an absolute.

Yeah I know. My brain did that many many many times. But now I know what it all means and how it works. So I can actually write this stuff. Yay elastic brain learning.

[cathalpaint]

boolean functions mainly

I’m making good progress with my learning in processing. Much to the irritation of my children. I like to advise them in great detail of how and why I have made such and such a coding decision and what happened and how I overcame the dreadful situation. They are 10 and 7 and really just want to play minecraft.

Today I was covering the use of loops. WHILE and FOR loops. I have done this before,but I actually know what I’m doing as opposed to knowing how to do it. Below is my work from today. (I’m still trying to work out how to embed the entire digital work in a smaller window. I’ll figure it out eventually and put these all in a gallery.)

[cathalpaint]

Coding and the feel of satisfaction

I’m trying to learn Processing . Again. Properly this time honest. I am coding a bit every day to get better. Covering old things I know nad things I thought I knew. As part of this learning I am also trying to communicate the code in pseudo -code. Hopefully this will make my methodology clear to everyone and help me to think in a sequential fashion to solve my coding problems. I’m currently using boolean TRUE/FALSE functions. Below is the pseudo-code and the link to the processing Sketch.

https://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/901734

I found this very logical to code. The feeling I get from watching the sketch in action is oddly satisfying. It was the same for coding it.

It uses a truth table. There are main variables the X co-ordinate position and the Y co-ordinate position.

The square has to move in 4 directions. :

1 Left to Right;

2 Top to Bottom:

3 Right to Left;

4 Bottom to Top;

Let’s say the width is 200 and the height is 200. In the code the TOP RIGHT corner is (0,0) so X = 0 and Y = 0.

1.(X,Y) is at (0,0) to move LEFT to RIGHT

X is 0. Y is 0. X needs to increase from 0 to 200.

While the Y co-ordinate (height) remains at 0.

2. (X,Y) = (200,0) to move TOP to BOTTOM

X is now 200. Y is 0. Y needs to increase from 0 to 200.

While X remains at 200.

3. (X,Y) = (200,200) to move RIGHT to LEFT

X is 200. Y is 200. X needs to decrease from 200 to 0.

While Y remains at 200.

4.(X,Y) = (0,200) to move BOTTOM to TO.

X is 0. Y is 200. Y needs to decrease from 200 to 0.

While X remains at 0.

5. Go To 1.

.

[cathalpaint]

All out of gum.

I came here to talk art and chew gum, and I’m almost out of gum.

I started the MA in October officially. It’s a really really good course; so rich in information and the tutors are extremely talented. I had intended to blog about the lectures and my thoughts, but the lectures are so frequent and my thoughts are currently in a whirl and take too long settle, to allow for regular posts. So I will use this as a space to hopefully spew my thoughts out and refine my ideas over time. The big challenges ahead of me are: 1) Managing my mental health whilst on the course. 2) Managing my time between, Uni, some form of work, child care and being social.

On paper..um in pixel format that looks easy to my eyes, and I’m guessing your eyes too. In reality I know it’s going to be really tough. I’m only in week 2 of the course (it feels like week 5) and I’m back in the crisis house. So things are difficult on the mental health side of things. It might seem frivolous to you to want to be social, but my big issue (it’s not a magazine for me) is the feeling of isolation I have. It’s a constant sense of being alone, even in company. But if i start talking about it I’ll get myself down and side tracked. After week 2 where are my ideas at. The tutors are pushing us to look at our own practice and to treat our practice as a form of research. For me this currently entails the nature of creating work and I guess the nature of creativity. If we look at current technologies neural networks are creating works of art using deep learning. One has even created ‘The Next Rembrandt’ . In an environment like this where algorithms can learn to create artefacts and can exhibit creative tendencies I find myself drawn to the question of what exactly is creativity. I think as humans we baulk at the idea that a machine can create. That a series of instructions can result in a unique or creative response. That’s exactly what attracts me to the issue. I think of artists that explore algorithms, not that they would have thought of their work like that. Sol le Witt, and the conceptual artists spring to mind. They thought of the idea as the art, in which an artefact was only a solid form of the idea, not the actual art. My thoughts on this need refining and teasing out. Hopefully here is where I can do this. The other strands to my ideas are as follows ( I might not peruse these strand on the MA but they are elements I think about often.) 1) The illusion of choice. 2) Art that can never be seen in it’s final state; temporally, spatially or both. 3) The scaffolding that exist behind plastic and virtual structures. ( I use the term plastic to refer to physical things in the real world IE not solely digital.)

(I’m on new medication and either its starting to have an effect or my mind is tired, either way my thoughts are cloudy.) My starting idea is below. 1)I have used processing to create a basic drawing program. 2) reduced it to 90 characters, ignoring the white spaces between the characters. 3)the information was translated to binary. 4) the binary was encoded in to a visual image. 5) the binary of the program was transferred to a canvas in pencil. ( it needs to be tidied up a lot.) The idea is that, the code that creates the drawing program is a scaffold to allow creativity. By drawing binary on the canvas I have in my mind at least drawn a scaffold that allows infinite drawings to be made. The canvas is not a only a drawing but a gateway to infinite drawings. But only if you understand the syntax used. ( I don’t really know why that last point feels important to me yet.)

[cathalpaint]

MA day 1

This probably could have used a better title, but I wanted to get as much of an initial impression of my first day at Hallam for an MA with little or no time to think about it. I’ll come back later to insert stuff less impression but that I fond funny. I’ve been upbeat most of the day, with the promise of new things and beginnings and the unknown which will build. A constructive unknown. Knowing I can do this because I've done it before when i was less prepared. The day was really just a run down of the ins and out of the course structure the main aspects of it. The assessment stuff and how the modules will unfold. We got to get a more informal feel for each other on the course and sense of where we ( well I did at least) we fit in. The module stuff I’ll come back to. The day culminated in a really informal meeting with the rest of the MA cohort ( there may be other students yet to arrive due to visa and travel stuff.) I got chatting to a few of the other people on the course; 4 teachers by my count which is interesting, and 3 / 4 straight from the BA and one from a non teaching background. I knew we were going to meet the other MA students, but it took me by surprise all the same and I think my mind had had enough just whirring from initial thoughts and ideas from off the basic introduction to the various elements f the course. I get a kind of nervous energy that I expel through chat in some situations, this was definitely one of those. I had lots of odd humorous thoughts that wanted to shout out, but I knew they were just annoying and not funny to anyone but my stupid head. (oh in slips some self loathing) At the end of the thing I stood around, feeling I don't know what. A need to do, I guess. But it was a dead zone in my head and all that was required of me was to either mingle or just go. Most people had just went anyway. I hung around for a bit said some banal shit and left. Leaving the room is where my head/mind/brain whatever my anxiety began to kick in. I was in a whirl, a mad beast in a head, looking for something to panic about. I asked my self what was bothering me. (other than getting work which definitely was not the source of the chaos in my head.)It was just my head my brain looking for an element; a threat to jump upon and blow out of proportion. A reason to say well this wasn’t right or that will be a problem. I’m aware of all the known problems and although I’m not yet on top of them all I have plans. Not great plans, but ways to at least begin dealing with the issues. If only I found my mental health as easy to deal with.

So none of theses things were in a problem. You’d think that realising this would help dissipate the noise and churning of my mind. No. Instead I found my self trying to not just break down in to tears. Having to control my self rigidly. I want a space where these things the tears the panic can just come to the surface and be done with. I'm not even sure it is a panic, it's just an intensity of everything, formless but urgently demanding; all consuming in my mind if I let it be. I’ve just had to bury it for dealing with at another time.

How did I do that. well I made a list of 3 things I wanted to accomplish today. (This was number 4 i.e. not on my list but in doing it I realise how useful this could be for me over the course off the...um course of course. (It might even be a good decompression tool for me.) Then breaking those tasks into smaller elements, that I can work at immediately. I still want to crash and burn at time though. I need that space to be vulnerable, but I can’t do it one my own because I guess I'm worried about it spinning out of control and I want that comfort of an other human. I don’t need them to tell me it will be alright; just a presence that will allow me to know that I have someone there. Just being there would act as a safeguard to me spiralling out of control, to damage levels. I still hurt my self. Less visibly but left to my own self at the moment these overwhelming emotions emerge and a need for them to just stop, just stop, and then I get hurt. The modules are fairly straight forward. 60 credits on ART Practice- In my understanding making things ( mistakes successes and so on) some documentation our thoughts on how and why we are making and having an opinion about it all , Art Context is 4 strands all designed to try to push the way we practice / make produce and display and to think about how we do this. each strand is 30 credits. Basically choose one of 2 choices as they are delivered. First choice is : A) Drawing on/from the archive. or; B) Assemblage and collage. And then: A) Art Writing or; B) Curation - time and place. A very rich layered course. I’m taken by all the strands like everyone on the course was, but being aware of time constraints I’ll opt for assemblage and collage, then curation. That's me on this for now I’ll edit and move stuff around and be back for a bit Thursday. I have a lot of thoughts to think out and this will be where I air them either immediately or after I give them time to breathe. Right now its time for tea, rice and some mysterious veg concoction I made. Tomorrow I’ll try to start moving my stuff over. I also have therapy tomorrow and it will be the last session fora while because, I’m not finding time with everything to work on the therapy. I don’t want to be without that space as its the only one I have that is there for me at the moment. So I'm a bit terrified at the thought of being bereft of a space for a while. So until next time.