An issue of Modart Magazine landed on my desk. Given the obsession I’ve had with graffiti and the masters of the medium for the last decade, I found this piece written by Copyright really striking:
I’m cheating on my girlfriend. I’m in love with hundreds of women that do not exist. I can see their faces. I paint, draw and spray them everyday. I am having an affair with paint. It’s all over my clothes, on my skin and in my mouth.
I live in a loft room in London, a badly ventilated enclosed space where I spray and sleep and guests automatically exclaim things like: “Dude, woah! You’re hardcore” or “you must be getting high as a kite in here”. Nope, actually I’m just getting headaches and purple snot.
It kills me. It makes my eyes sting. I wake up in the night choking, have headaches all day, and then there are the nosebleeds. Yet I do it all again the next day. A love for these high-heeled honeys compels me to keep on. Like Harpies tempting sailors to their doom.
I understand why I paint, I have also come to accept my drive to paint illegally. What I can’t find peace with is my daily habit. I have a girlfriend I love and a hopeful future, yet I continue to poison myself, and for what? Art? What use is a short-lived legacy of paintings?
Who am I telling this to? Maybe myself? What’s the answer? Sacrifice the paintings, find a big expensive studio, or just carry on in ignorance and thick purple snot? Makes me wonder what use art is. It can’t cure me if I get sick, and it certainly won’t clean up after me if the toxic fumes fuck my bladder and bowel control. Not to mention the dreaded C words - cancer, cyst, culture…
I know this. I repeat it. I hear it from my girlfriend. But I can’t seem to stop. I guess I’m not the first guy to kill himself for love. Is ti love for painting? Is it love as addiction? Who knows? What I do know is these bitches are killing me and I love them all anyway.
