Because you can never have enough pictures of cats on the internet!

I’m not 100% sure when I drew this but it was probably around the year 2000.
To see more of my art please visit www.paulgarrard.com

Learning to cringe again

I lack personal confidence and have low self-esteem. If I ever reveal this to people who don’t know me that well they find it hard to believe. I’m also a very shy person. Plus I have the added handicap of blushing profusely and often for no reason. Occasionally I will blush for other people; in other words when others are in a situation that calls for blushing and they fail to do so I will blush for them. I’m a proxy blusher. I also worry a lot. I could worry for England. Olympic gold standard me.

People I meet don’t always recognise this picture of me, but then all they see is the exterior. I am like the proverbial duck. On the face of it I’m the serene gliding on the water. They never notice the feet below furiously paddling to keep going.

I’ve never been good with rejection, even though I’ve had my fair share of it. And the past few weeks have been quite a shock to the system. My confidence has been dented big-time. Strangely my reaction to rejection or tragedy is often different to many people. I give the appearance of reacting in an opposite way to being upset. I appear on the surface to be happy or devil-may-care but it’s a defence mechanism. I have been known to laugh at bad news. Its not that I find it funny, I just can’t help myself. I also have a tendency to say stuff that I don’t always mean. Verbiage is broadcast before brain is engaged. I then regret what I’ve said and want to crawl away and hide under a stone. Enter ‘the cringe’. Throughout my life I’ve said some spectacular foot in mouth things.

I once heard Desmond Morris say that people who blush are survivors. Blushing is a survival technique dating back to the very beginnings of our evolution. I buy that. It makes sense to me. I’ve survived pretty well so far.

So my strategy is to surround myself with a hard shell to protect this soft nut inside. My fear is that if I weaken I go under; we’ll call it ‘stiff upper lip’ syndrome.

I am the walnut, goo goo goo joob



please note: It's important to read the next post as well

Dogwood sunrise

Sometimes less is more...

A Fractal Shindig Yipe

 

 

A picture by me.

Black

I have black moods. I’ve had them since my teens. They are a very strange place to be. I don’t choose when to have them. I don’t know when they will arrive. They don’t seem to be caused by events or other people. They come without warning. They can confuse other people something rotten, and they don’t do me a lot of good either. Sometimes other people think that they have upset me or that I have been upset by someone. Whilst others do upset me from time to time they are never the cause of the blackness. Thankfully, these days, the slough of despond rarely lasts longer than 24 hours, and often it is much shorter. They have also become less frequent the older I get. In my earlier years they might have gone on for several days, often been a lot deeper and manifesting themselves much more often. Now, I know that they will pass; that the chemical imbalance will wash through my system. Sadly, even though I know this, there is bugger all I can do about it apart from retreat into my shell. It’s almost as if there are two of me in this body. Eventually the storm clouds pass and I am all smiles again. I much prefer the smiley me!

Split Enz

"When my baby's walking down the street
I see red, I see red, I see red.
How could someone wicked walk around free
I see red, I see red, I see red.
I see red, I see red
(red!), I see red."

Tim Finn

The Stork

Lino-cut pastiche

more

Portrait of an artist as a young man

As a young man I had ambitions to be an artist. A visual artist that is. I’ve always been creative, and always felt comfortable expressing my thoughts in a visual format. I considered going to Art College when at school, and then a little later after I’d been at work for a few years. But basically I chickened out on both occasions. I have No regrets about those decisions as I’m not convinced that I would have been happy. One of my concerns has always been prostituting myself, and my art. I’ve never wanted to sell anything that I’ve produced. I’ve always liked the idea of mass producing images and got quite excited when the plain paper copier became readily available. It started me down the road of producing black and white images for repetition. I also had a little bit of success providing images for indie music labels. But life got in the way and I stopped making pictures of any sort. I’ve had one or two false starts in the intervening years but never managed to sustain anything. I’ve recently started again. Only time will tell if I keep it up but I feel a lot more confident. Digital technology helps. In fact it helps a great deal as I now feel that the technology has finally caught up with where I want to be and how I want to express myself. Watch this space.

1003 words

the day the music died

it was just before christmas
the day the music died
at first we thought it a dream
the day the music died
or maybe a fantasy
the day the music died
oh dark day and dark dark night
the day the music died
no more pie american
the day the music died
the walrus would sing no more
the day the music died
silence, deafening silence
the day the music died

Paul Garrard

I thank you!