Julian Schnabel (mixed media)

Julian Schnabel - (born October 26, 1951) is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s.

Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates.

The thing I don't get with these artists is how do they get the objects to actually stick :( I've found it so frustrating. I learned that he participated at the Venice Biennale in 1980 with Anselm Kiefer and George Baselitz. Which this style of work makes a link and sense of style for me. I love Kiefer's work also.

  Humanity Asleep

  Humanity Asleep  -  drew inspiration from William Blake.



 He uses diverse materials such as plaster, wax, photographs, antlers, velvet and ceramics. His paintings make use of canvas, wood, muslin and even surfboards. His paintings often combine abstract and figurative elements. Due to the size, weight and depth of his works, they are often given sculptural properties.

Diary pages

The diary I found about my thoughts worries and feelings. Keep a diary I was told while struggling with my panic attacks.. I've got many pages in there.. all going over similar worries of death, disease and leaving my children alone in the world. 2 years down the line and I'm still worrying the same shite. What if or I feel like that etc. Making myself ill from worry. I've done lots of work trying to help myself get (we'll say better) but really finding ways of learning to stop this cycle of torture.  

I am SICK, sick of caring, sick of struggling, sick of my fucking mind. I feel many emotions lately, lost, alone and frightened. 

So I have through many hours came to the idea of using the birds nest I found in the forest as I box for my diary. My burn't diary. pieces of my past encased to be reborn as eggs. Death or destruction doesn't have to mean the end. If it did I should be dead now! One eggs I will put my hopes and postitve thoughts for my future. This egg will be golden and different from the rest. 

The back of the bird nest is missing and I plan to make another book from the bark paper I made as a back cover. The image of a bird feeding its young as a view when you look through the box inside. I think to strenghten this I will encase the whole book in resin (wax too) sealed images, to take to my new ways of thinking. Like the Egyptians kinda did with the inscription inside the tombs of the dead.  

Making the casts for my eggs of plaster mixed with the burned pieces of diary and photos of my past.

Pieces of dairy and photos

Mixing the ashes and plaster

Why the eggs and the nest/bird box. Well a few thoughts and reasons brought me to this point 

• My love of nature
• consideration of death and past emotions
• my son telling me he wishes he could fly and be a bird!
• concepts of freedom and re-birth
• symbolic educational theories I've looked into (below)
• my own meditation and learning of different cultures (bible, Buddhism, mythology, psychology and philosophy)
• bring together my thoughts and ideas
• research of other artists and they way of viewing

Wasp I just googled as I currently have a wasp making a bink in my shed

So as you can see new beginnings, order, change, creation, new life.

For all these matters I need to get rid of my past and this is something I haven't been able to do so far.  I can't let the weight of the past keep me down anymore, I want to be more bird and fly.

diary pages beginning explanned.

This was a starting point to use words as a way to actually get out how I feel about my state of mind. Who I am and the struggles of late.

wax and wool to show a sloppy mess of a mind, nothing making sense 

the other side of me, the panic side of being lied to about what is real and what isn't fact in my thoughts

positive thoughts

good day feelings

bad day thoughts and worries

My thoughts at the time, broken and trying to piece back together a broken self.

I did try and use my feeling to create a place. Bleak and not very exciting, dry and weather beaten.Not the kinda place I find my happiness at in the real world. My head thinks one thing and reality shows another. That is the different, I have to get out of my head and realise the truth of what does actually matter. Silence the false thinking and live in the moment of now. 

As I way to do this I have been using mindfulness and meditate. Not to a higher level but the first steps to getting back my mind and focus. I've been robbed into thinking a certain way for too long.

Alan Watts - said that human being should consider two things in they lifetime

1.  to consider death, to observe skulls and skeletons and to wonder what it'll be like to go to sleep and never wake up!  NEVER - THAT IS A VERY GLOOMY THING FOR CONTEMPLATION.  But its like manure just as manure fertilizes the plants and so on, so the contemplation of death and acceptance of death is very highly generative of creative life.
2. To follow the possibility of the idea that you're totally SELFISH. that you don't have a good thing to be said for you at all, you're a complete and utter rascal. when you go deeply into the nature of selfishness, what do you discover?

• I love myself I seek my own advantage
• Now, what is the self that I love?
• What do I want?
• this becomes an increasingly ever deepening puzzle!
• generation comes from this point

In the whole scheme of life there has to be the shadow! Without the shadow there can't be the substance.

Well I've definitely done the observing death with my skulls and animals

you, me and the tree

Mixed media -

objects are material and metaphor


The idea for the tree came to me naturally. Lately for many months, I've been struggling again with my mental health. I walk my dogs daily around the local forests and often admire the old fallen down and rotten pieces of trees around. In many ways I feel a connection to them in the sense of the abandonment and the way the natural elements have taken over the trunk and have left their mark.

I sometimes also feel that my mind is rotten and has left me open to the elements. Alone afraid and rotting in my own self pity or grey area between wellness and insanity. The physical symptoms that come from panic and fear being present and then trying to tell yourself its just part of the cause and effect. Its not worth the worry and is exhausting.

 Have you ever been walking forward in the wind, pushing and pushing against it, That is sometimes the way I feel, like I've been walking against a gale.   However, with my mental health the more I face it and try to find a way to walk along with it the easier it is and less power it has.  (what I mean is that if you walk sideways against the wind, you are giving the wind less of an area to push against, if you walk face on the surface area is bigger and takes more mass and energy). I had to test these simple things on my walk over fields one day.) lesson learnt. Don't fight what you can't change, work with it and enjoy the journey.

I have also been looking into philosophy and have found many things I connect with. Natural fundamentals of reality, and existence. I have looked at many areas of psychology also, as you can maybe see in other blogs I've wrote. Truth is my mind is full of wanting input, but I also find it hard to take it in as it can be overwhelming at times. Anyway back to my tree mixed media project!!

The tree I want to build up from the core to the outer bark, using a selection of wood I find on my walks. I do like to collect things of interest to me like an unusual patterned bark, or anything really that jumps out at me. (pottery from rivers, rusty pieves of metal, bricks) I don't think I come across these finds by chance, I believe their purpose will either come to me further down the line and if not in the short term then I appreciate that it was significant to me at the time. Does it actually have to have a meaning ?????

 life goes on after the main source has gone

I'd like to reference the blog regarding the consider death at this point too as it all makes a part in my work.


Putting yourself back together. Thats what we do isn't it. pull yourself together is a good saying, but what the hell is that of any use. or get a grip is another :) I think these are unhelpful sayings and I think we should acknowledge the happenings we find ourself in. I do hope this is making sense as I know my mind is kinda everywhere at the moment. Manic in a sense.

So long story short, I'm gonna build a tree from the different pieces of trees! A tree that looks like a tree but is different or scarred, etched into and pieced together,. But giving the rotten bark a different togetherness. Nothing will change for it, it will still die and maybe be home to some insects but for now (like myself)  purposeful, defiant and important to the small minority that knows of it or sees the beauty in the indifference.

The social psychology has made me think of the ways we behave in the presence of others, and to look at the conditions under which certain behavior/actions and feelings occur. I feel ashamed a lot of the time, not good enough and ugly. But who am I compairing myself too?

Social psychology is to do with the way these feelings, thoughts, beliefs, intentions and goals are constructed and how such psychological factors, in turn, influence our interactions with others.

Funny how mental illness is now popular to the everyday people. The only people who don't want a condition is the ones who actual have the real thing. I do think society and the everyday unrealistic pressures we put on each other have contributed to this. My walks are the escape for me. Back to nature and the part of me that I had lost for some time. How did we get so far away from being naturally grounded. even now I sit surfing the so called web. Another thing like mobile phones and money that has taken over our instinctual being.

I could go on and on but I think I've wrote enough for now.