Writings
My Grandfather
My grandfather was one of the most important figures in my life. He was an artist. I painted his portrait when I was ten or eleven and brought the painting to him. He was the reason I wanted to be a painter. I don’t think he liked children. He never showed much interest. When we would go to see him in Paris I would always ask to do some painting. He had a studio in the garden, but I was put at the kitchen table with some coloured pencils and printing paper.
When he died there were only eight people at his funeral. I cried for him. After the funeral one of my aunties told me that she had spent the whole funeral trying to squeeze out a tear, but that she hadn’t been able to. Perhaps it was because he referred to her and her two sisters as his three big mistakes in his book.
The next day we went to his apartment. I took all of his paints and his brushes. It felt a bit like revenge. I think he would have liked that.
Doctor
I asked my doctor about getting a dyslexia test. I’m not diagnosed but I feel sure that I have it. It would be a relief to have a diagnosis. She said that they wouldn’t do one because of my age. And then I told her that I was feeling depressed. She said that she could see that it wasn’t bad enough for me to qualify for help. I suppose it must just be in my head.
So finally I asked for a vasectomy and she agreed.
Pollarrds
It’s November. Oslo gets so dark this time of year. Yesterday I started painting at 11 and by 2:30 it was already too dark to see. I have been taking vitamin d every morning for the past four months along with some fish oils. They say that it will make all the difference.
They have started pollarding the trees along the streets. They do it this time of year because it causes less stress on the trees and minimal loss of sap. I find some poetry in them and have made a number of paintings.
Guston painted at night
I painted until late at night. I have not painted at night since I was a teenager. I used to love being awake whilst everyone else was sleeping. Like it was just me in the world. And then for years I only painted whilst there was daylight. I guess I thought it was important to see the colour but now I’m not sure it’s that important.
It’s so dark here that even in the day I can’t see. I guess I will see my paintings in the spring. So, I may as well paint at night.
Guston painted at night. You can really tell. At night I trust myself more. I think that if you are really going to make a painting you have to trust yourself. Because usually you don’t understand what you are doing until it’s done anyway.
Susan
I used black in a painting. It was the first time in years. I’m not sure if it will stay. I can’t tell if it’s doing what everyone says black does to a painting or if it works. Maybe I’m scared. Beckmann knew how to use it though.
Before I entered art school I painted with a lot of black. And then when I got there my professor told me to put it away and she was right. She also hated Prussian blue because it ends up in everything. Once she wore a lime green leather suit to a crit. She looked wonderful with her red hair. That’s how I always picture her.
She taught me how to see paintings. I had her in my first year and then I signed up to her classes every year after that. I still use her lessons when I am looking at paintings.
After I quit art school and went into film making, I invited her to my apartment to look at some paintings and she said that maybe I wasn’t a painter. She was right. The paintings were bad.
I know that I’m a painter. But sometimes you have to turn your back on it to know that you are still in love.
My father
My first painting teacher was my father. He really never pushed me in anything in my life except in painting. It wasn’t that he especially wanted me to be a painter. Maybe he saw that I could be good at it. I think I liked the attention I got from him most.
He is not an artist although what does that really mean. But he doesn’t paint. He can see anatomy and perspective and composition though. When I was twelve years old I painted a portrait of Michael Jordan. I spent so long on that painting and every time I fixed it and showed it to him he had something else to say that was wrong. I remember crying because all I wanted was for it to be right. I’m thankful that he didn’t just say that’s beautiful like all the other parents. I think he really cared.
He took me to the Picasso museum in Paris when I was fourteen. We went with the whole family but all I remember is the two of us standing side by side looking at painting.
Vasectomy
I finally got my vasectomy. The operation took longer than I thought it would. And it was pretty uncomfortable. I am no good at things like that. Blood and needles.
For the first testicle I felt like I was going to faint and my hands and feet got pins and needles. But then for the second one I managed to start thinking about something else and that went better. I thought about Didier and Toussaint and that I should really make portraits of them.
I walked out of the clinic like a lame dog. I am glad that it is over. I don’t want any more children.
When I got home I tried to paint because I had the day off but I was too uncomfortable. I waited for the kids to get back from school. I felt a new sense of love for them. They are my children and they are the only ones I will have. They looked so adorable dressed in their Santa outfits.
World cup final
We watched the World Cup final last night. I had been boycotting the whole thing but then France made it to the final and I watched it anyway. I was supporting France but every time we scored my heart sank. I guess in the end I was supporting Messi. It was his last game for Argentina and his dream coming true seemed more important than France winning. He looked like a king being crowned lifting the trophy in his Arabic robe. Maybe I’m not a very loyal fan. I supported Italy in ‘94 because I liked Roberto Baggio’s ponytail.
After the game Ziada and I stayed up talking for hours. We told each other about our unrequited loves. We have never spoken much about the people we loved before we met. It always seemed too painful. But something has changed. I’ve never been less sure about our future together or more in love. We are growing individually and I prefer it that way. She said she was sorry for making my life so complicated and I told her that I like complicated
Yoan
The rhododendron leaves have curled up and turned black from the cold. I always think that they look most beautiful this time of year. They just hang there but never fall. And then in the spring they turn green and reach for the sun again. I have made a number of paintings of them.
Last night was Christmas Eve. Jan came over for dinner. She doesn’t eat meat so I made sole meunière and we all stayed up until 3am talking.
The last time we did a Christmas with just friends was in Montreal. All of the French and Spanish exchange students that I had made friends with came over and we cooked a turkey and danced and drank. Yoan arrived with a pile of snow on his head as a gift. He also brought me a mono print. It was a real masterpiece. He is really a great artist and I looked up to him a lot. He made me feel like an artist too. It was the closest to being in love with a man I have been.
White painting
I painted over a big painting with white. If 1.5 meters can be called big. Paintings seem to be getting bigger and bigger. I always like the small ones. Morandi painted small. I think I could look at his paintings forever.
I have also started four new paintings and its torture. The first few sessions of a new painting are always torture. Like I have forgotten how to do it and I start thinking that maybe I’m just a fake. But then not painting is torture too. Usually I paint it white after and then I can start. A white painting is different than a white canvas.
On those days that I paint, Ziada takes the kids. I feel so guilty when she has spent the whole day alone with them and I have only made a mess. So I lie when she gets home and say it was productive and that I am trying to remember that it’s all part of the process. But really I just want to go to bed and forget it ever happened.
All the beauty and the bloodshed
Daniel and I went to see ‘All the beauty and the bloodshed.’ It was all about Nan Goldin and the Sackler family who are responsible for the opioid crisis in America. I liked the bits about her living at the Bowery in New York in the eighties the best. It all seemed so romantic. The drugs and art and all the disfunction. Her photographs have so much romance and so much pain.
I made a painting and after I realized it was about a woman I used to pass sitting in the tunnel of the Forest Hill station. Her name was Stefania. She always smiled so sweetly. You could tell that she was kind. Sometimes I would stop and we would talk. Then one day I walked by and there were rows of flowers where she used to sit and I knew that she had died. There was an article about her in the evening standard and people spoke about how we all could have done more to help her.
I hid my cocaine addiction for five years. At first I was in denial and then I was ashamed. Not even Ziada knew about it. Often I would get drunk so that she couldn’t tell I was high. I guess drugs are only romantic until they are not anymore.
I have been clean from that for three years and three months.
Amores Perros
Ziada is in Colorado for a work course. She left last Sunday and won’t be back until Saturday. So it’s just me and the kids. Toussaint got ill the day she left and then Didier got ill too. So I have been home with them all week. They always get so cuddly when they are sick.
This evening Toussaint asked to be picked up and so I picked him up and danced slowly to the song that was playing. It reminded me of when my dad would do the same with me. It was so familiar. I guess that those are the moments that stick with you.
Last night I watched Amores Perros. I had forgotten how brutal it is. The dog fights and the old man who rescues stray dogs. And the fighter dog that he nurses back to health and then one day he comes home and the dog has killed all of the other strays. It was so heart-breaking.
Maybe we are more like those dogs than we like to think.
Tonsils
Didier went to get his tonsils taken out. He is so fragile. Seeing him in hospital brought it all back. When he was born it was after five days of Labour. It all ended in an emergency caesarean. When they handed him to me I fell in love. But then he turned blue and went all floppy. The nurse grabbed him from me and I think I stopped breathing too. After he was fine but we had to stay in hospital for some days. Both Ziada and Didier had gotten an infection and I had to take him to get injections every morning. I always wonder if those first days have had a lasting effect on him.
There was a report that said that in the UK black women are four times more likely to die in hospital during childbirth than white women. I think we were closer to becoming a statistic than they were willing to admit.
When Toussaint was born, we decided to have him at home. They tried to say that because Ziada had had a caesarean she would be at risk of a scar rupture. But it felt like less of a risk than going back into the hospital. He was born over the toilet in our attic apartment and that was wonderful.
After he was born I went to buy pizza for us and the midwives who had been with us all night. Whilst I was waiting for the pizza I went into the pub next door and the bar tender gave me a pint on the house because I told him my second son had just been born.
Meet cute
Today is our 9 year anniversary. I know it’s what everyone says but it was one of the happiest moments of my life. Our friends and family came from all over the world to dance in a little pub in south London with us.
The first time I met Ziada I was busking outside of a liquor store on 10th avenue Prince George. She put a dollar in my guitar case and told me that she thought that I was cute. After that she just stuck in my mind.
I applied to art school in Montreal and was accepted that winter. I knew I needed to see her again and so I went out to the liquor store every night and played. That was the only place I knew to meet her. It was the most romantic thing I had ever done. Romance comes more easily when you are young.
On the last night before I was supposed to leave I played one last song and then she appeared. It was just like the movies. We met that night at the rum jungle and when it was time to leave she kissed me.
Father’s day
Sunday was Father’s Day. They let me sleep in until 10am which is almost five hours more than my usual wake up call. The boys had been singing about Father’s Day for weeks. To them it was like a birthday. Ziada made Canadian pancakes with syrup and Didier ate most of them.
Toussaint made me a noughts and crosses board at school with the markers P and A for papa, and Didier drew me some Pokémon. Ziada bought me some beard oil and face cream. She knows that I would never spend that money on myself. She is always looking for ways to increase my well-being. And she wrote me a beautiful card. Her cards always make me cry and so this time I started crying before I had even read it. They were real tears. And I felt so grateful to have my family.
Later I turned on social media and saw a Palestinian father in Gaza. His five children had just been killed in an explosion and he was looking for their bodies at the hospital. When they opened the white sheet with his youngest son in it he cried out ‘where is his head’ and collapsed. It was the worst thing I have ever seen. And then I started crying again and they were real tears too. But this time they weren’t happy. I don’t know how our leaders sleep at night. They should all be hung for this.
Commission
I painted a portrait of my grandmother when I was sixteen. My grandfather commissioned it. We agreed he would pay me £200. It was for her birthday. And then he fell ill and we flew back from Canada to Scotland to say goodbye.
I spent the whole of the next week painting the portrait. I used my old art teacher’s studio. It was the first time I had painted in a real studio. And I felt like a real artist.
When it was finished I showed it to him. He seemed moved by it. The next day we had to leave and I knew I wouldn’t see him again.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I painted my grandmother in mourning.
I still charged him for the painting.
Dreaming of Javier
Saturday I woke up and it was my painting day. I only really have one day a week to paint. Otherwise I’m making frames for more successful artists. I was in a funk and Ziada told me to take a walk.
I went down to the café on the corner. I went there because the barista is kind of cute and she smiles at me so sweetly. She wasn’t there but I got a cappuccino anyway. I thought about Ziada and her new life. And I wondered if I could also feel free like she does.
I thought about what it would be like if the world hadn’t told me all of the rules of how and who to love. I remember watching Javier Bardem in ‘Before night falls.’ He was so sensitive and so beautiful. I wanted to be like him. I’m learning that there are many ways to love someone and some are sexual and others are romantic. Maybe I could love Javier Bardem romantically.
Thinking about that made the sky bluer and I went home and worked on the painting of Philip I had been reworking.
Daniel
Yesterday Daniel came over for dinner. He was my first friend. We used to play knights and cowboys together and then we formed a band called ‘The mega rabbits’ and played concerts for our parents. It was just like a childhood should be.
When we started school I went into the class above him and we stopped hanging out. There was real warfare between his class and mine. So I guess we had to choose and I chose my new friends.
I have always regretted that. I can’t remember but I hope that I was never mean to him during those years. But we never reconnected much after that.
So last night was the first time we have spoken properly in close to thirty years.
It was a beautiful evening. And after he left I felt like I had just found an old sibling again.
Philip
I went to see the Louise Bourgeois show at the national gallery with Hasti and Ingvild. It was so moving. There is nowhere to hide with her work.
After Ingvild went home because she was not feeling well and so Hasti and I went to meet some of her friends for a drink.
There was a beautiful man named Phillip who performs drag. I felt curious about him and then when I got home I began a painting of him.
He asked me if I was queer and I said no. I guess I still didn’t think that I was.
Halos and public toilets
When I was a kid my mum got me an illustrated bible. She wasn’t really religious. But the pictures were great. So violent.
I remember looking through the book to see who got the halos. To me that meant that they were the good ones.
There was a park across the street from our house growing up. And the public toilets were known as a meet-up spot for gay men. I remember seeing our neighbor walking his dog through that park. He was wearing a pair of white jeans. And then someone saying he was on his way to the toilets - ‘The poofter.’ I guess I always wanted to be one of the good ones. I don’t know but it seems like even if you weren’t religious, those ideas still applied.