The first hurdle.

Yesterday I gained an inkling of understanding into one of the most venerated cliches of all time - the impoverished artist. I have some shocking news. Artists are not starving in their Parisian attic boltholes because they have chosen to live outside of the bourgeois confines of a capitalist society. Nor are they living on a cup of coffee a day because their artistic genius has gone unnoticed by the self-involved, self-satisfied, rolling-in-ready-cash potential benefactors of the world. The reason they are six months behind on the rent, starving, unkempt and generally grumpy is because they had to spend all their money on paint.

I trotted off to the art supply store yesterday all starry eyed and filled with dreams of perusing the aisles for hours, filling my (probably wicker) basket with goodies, pausing occasionally to adjust the rakish angle of my beret and discuss the merits of cadmium yellow over burnt sienna with the charming & helpful store assistants. Hah!

It turned out that buying paint requires the kind of sums of money that make you reconsider whether your child really needs lunch every day this week. Will it be this teeny tiny tub of paint? Or bread, milk, eggs, a trip to the DVD store, a gelato and some new Bonds undies? Seriously. The whole found object artwork thing suddenly makes a whole lot of sense. I am not sure if I can afford to nurture a creative process that involves paint. I mean really, how hard can it be to manufacture paint? Why is it so expensive? Are Oompa Loompas involved? Or is it a conspiracy of the capitalist structure to break the spirit of emerging artists and send them back to work in retail jobs where they belong? Either way, my hopes of chucking around vast quantities of paint died a very sudden & unexpected death yesterday. Sigh. I think I need a cup of tea.