The artist and machinery of this thing

What has happened trough this project however is that I have in a way I am becoming close to the mariners. The mariners  can depend upon correspondence arriving to them on a regular basis, I am the human touch,  someone alive and unrelated to their work writing to them, in this sense I feel the very correspondence has started to matter , more than the outcome of the project,  and the paintings of their voyage.

 I on the other hand have come to fret about where they are, what is going on with them, are they well, are they safe, lonely, happy, fed,  I am becoming something like M is to James Bond, or air traffic control is to a pilot. .. I am without a doubt emotionally involved, two months on from starting.

I am traveling , with the letters I receive, and am imaging the surrounding worlds, people, foods, smells, weathers.. And I too am changing. Changing my perception. For example,  this week I have been painting an oil rig. And instead of it being dead, steel, oil digging mechanical monster exhageratedley monstrous  painted by this artist girl who loves forests and fairies and mermaids and nature. The oil rig has transformed ..

Someone I care about works on that oil rig.  Someone whose life I imagine is tied to that rig. I have followed the building of a rig, I read about the frustrations and pitfalls of the construction, of the uncomfortable encounters with alien cultures and un unedible foods, of little surprises in a day around such a uncomfortable rig,  which make someone happy, and a compleatley different rig I paint. The oil rig, which not long ago-would to me have been a cold  materialistic mother nature damaging cruel bunch of metal angles, has transformed into a castle in the sun set. The place where I realise my fantasies.

The place I dream about, because there is someone I know and write to on it. And the way I paint it.. how can I describe it, the difference. I imagine I hear the sea. The rig, the mexhanical monster has managed to flow into a beautiful sunset, it has become -as horrible as this may sound a romantic rig painting -for god's sake, if such a thing is possible, its sounds more ghastly than it looks let me promise, for despite all this self-analysis I aimed to paint the thing as it actualy looks.

But As I am a painter of watercolours and soft shapes and seas and portraits -straight lines and angles are all  a new science to me, and had I tried to paint this two months a go it would have looked all nasty and mechancihal and evil, but now, that I know of 10 years of missed christmasses spent aboard, of a trillion lone nights spend aboard, and yet still distinguish a love for this work on this rig. How can I possibley paint it to look evil?  hm . I want to go there and paint, this is the result.

I hope Im making someone else-laugh too-other than me.