Smoking Dad. Lighting up Christmas.

November 29, 2014

I made this drawing sometime last year. It occured to me today I never smoke while walking with my son.   Like all modern kids he condemns my “disgusting” habit while not understanding the nature of addiction.  He is afraid I will die and leave him forever. A tough notion to face but yet I don’t really want to stop. As a single father and self enployed person I run around mostly like a headless chicken for most of the time. I smoke few fags. Maybe 5 a day. (I can’t manage that for fruit n veg). When I do light up I am never walking. I sit down for however long it takes, 5mins maybe?  I stop. Pick my nose. Do nothing. I think. This moment of stopping the worl has become precious,  especially in the studio. That moment of putting an unfinished picture on the wall, lighting a fag and just looking at it has become part of my process. Read Philip Guston’s biography, Night Studio, by his daughter. He describes doing the same thing convincingly.  Of course both of us are lying to ourselves. We are both simply drug addicts enslaved by the demon weed.   A great artist friend of mine, hooked on the same ritual,  gave up by holding a carrot in the same manner as a smoke while viewing her work. Carrots are in season. Perhaps I’ll have a crack at it. I reckon I’ll still be lighting up Christmas though.

ARTIST