ONE SELF PORTRAIT EVERY DAY in 2020 : 288

When I was on my MA at Chelsea we were allocated studio space but I never had much use for it. I didn’t do paintings or sculptures and the work I did that year was either organising the first Susak expo, making books and video. I was also working (freelance) for Walker Books so my time at college was precious so I didn’t waste time doing stuff I could do in the evenings from home. Apart from lectures and tutorials I would spend my time visiting (sometimes disturbing) other art students busy working. I would sometimes bring my gas cooker and make Turkish coffee in other people’s studio spaces. 

Here is a video of me “helping” David Smith on one of his paintings; he obviously didn’t want my help but gave me a job that he thought was safe for me to do. I set my little video camera on a tripod and we paint together. I love this video because at one point I use oil paints on a watercolour and he is not happy about it, I get him to re-enact the bit where he tells me off.

https://sracok-pohlmann.com/collaboration-with-david…/

Anyway, after the MA show, we had a few weeks to clear our things. Some students swapped artworks, David offered to swap one of his paintings with one of my photos of me cycling into the canal. For a brief period I owned a David Smith. Unfortunately I didn’t collect my stuff from the studios before the final deadline and the few things I still hadn’t collected were binned.

https://www.davidbriansmith.com

But I do own part of a work by David Smith. A few months previously, he had gone to the countryside, I think where is parents lived, I think it was in Somerset where he had painted several paintings with sheep. I had taken photos of local farmers and was planning to print them as squares and exhibit them as a square grid. I was looking at the photos “You’ve got eight farmers, you need nine to make a square”. “Shit!”

I offered to be his 9th farmer, together with Janko we went to Vauxhall City Farm, I put on several coats and I can’t remember where that cap came from.The furry animal in the background is a long-haired pig I think.

On the back of the photo it says: “To Dan, Thanks for being a farmer.” and then signed with XXX

I AM STILL ALIVE

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