100th post, and Big Things

Numbers, the more you look into them the more links you find. it is just random chance that post 100 involves possibly one of the biggest decisions in my magic life. It's random chance that a year and a day after me and my friend first entered the Magic Circle we will be giving our audition performances to be considered for membership.

I have to paint a poster. The poster has to show off many things I can do, it needs to be as wide as a table and 10 minutes long. I have brushes -sleights of varying sizes and shapes- and I have paints to dip then in -cards, cups balls, elastic bands- to paint with. It's the style of painting that is holding me up. There is the temptation to spew everything I know onto the paper ( I never elevated my painting to canvas standards) like some multi coloured finger painting of an overly enthusiastic  child . Here I would hope that examining judges could pick out a hue from the cacophony that they believe I managed to mix rather well. Then there is the temptation to the other extreme, to make a monochrome in one shade of delicate stippling. Here I would be challenging the judges to come closer, to see that I am doing one thing, incredibly well, and not giving a fig if it's the sort of thing they personally like.   As ever in my life I'm drawn to the middle ground. To paint a new narrative using the tools already at my disposal, but then I have so many other works which would demonstrate what they would like to see with only a little tweaking. Then there is the tired cliché about art. It is not what the artist puts in, but what he leaves out. I have a lot of material to draw on, it's becoming more of a burden than an advantage as I need to select my tools carefully.   I still have 12 days, in Dean days that works out at about a month and a half.  For the rest of today I shall sit and play with a new brush and paint that arrived in the post. Then tomorrow I shall sketch two completely different paintings, one on the new science basis I have been toying with, the other based heavily on my "Rapport" set. I shall play and ponder and then decide finally on Monday, where I shall have an unprecedented 7 days to hone my presentations.

I foresee much tea being drunk in the next week.