St Mary’s and St Nicholas’s Church, Beaumaris (August 8, 2016)

9.00 am. Following a period of poor health and a few day’s respite in North Wales, I returned to my cellar’s anterooms to begin a process of iconoclasm — putting out of their misery those visual works that had been too greatly wounded by the ravages of damp air and mold. An act of uncreation, as it were. This is not a task for the sentimental. Heartless Harvey went into action. I needed, also, to create space in the rooms to accommodate audio performance boxes and stands that are presently cluttering the sound studio.

I came across a sketchbook entitled ‘Working Drawings Book 3’ (1981), one of three kept during my final year of BA (Hons) Fine Art studies. Within there’s a pair of thumbnail studies (top) for a painting based on the theme of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, which is recorded in all four gospels. It took nearly twenty years before I found a way of realising the idea (bottom):

5000 Series: Matthew (2000) multipart inkjet print, 71.25 × 142.5 cm

I was merciless: ripping, scrunching, and deframing.  There’s now a stack of glazed box frames and a number of sheets of MDF, hardboard, and glass, as well as stretchers, that can be transported to the School for general use. (The materials had been paid for by various Arts Council and other grants over the years.)

After lunch, I made a swift trip to the School to deposit and (vainly retrieve) items. After which, my younger son and I shunted other items, now surplus to requirement, from the house to the garage. At the bottom of one box in the cellar I rediscovered the ‘family gun’:

It had belonged to my great grandfather on my father’s side. George Harvey (1893–1919) was a police sergeant in the Abertillery Constabulary. So the story goes, he purchased the weapon in order to secure the arrest of an armed gang of thieves who were hiding out at the top of the Arael Mountain, on the west side of the town. His gun, which is now triggerless and ‘duffed’, will be deposited with a police museum in South Wales on my next visit:

I adjusted my pace in the afternoon, digitally processing slides of work made for The Pictorial Bible I project.

Mid afternoon, the first NOISE PROJECTION was launched:

This, I anticipate, will be the first in a series of specialised investigations into sound and something else leading up to a major conference that’ll follow on from ‘The Noises of Art‘ (2013).

Evening. I battled with the ‘gallery’ function in WordPress. The thumbnails aren’t aligning correctly. Professional advice may be necessary.

Some observations and principles derived from today’s activities:

• No success worth its salt is secured without suffering and sacrifice.
• Mastery in art is predicated on the artist’s mastery of themselves.
• Either you control your desires or your desires control you.
• On abstinence: You’ll no longer miss what you’ve ceased to desire.
• Organise your workspace, and your thoughts will follow suit.
• One day you’ll have to relinquish everything, altogether. Better to start letting go of a few things now, under your control.
• Give up teaching before it gives up you.