One day at art school in an art history session a visiting lecturer showed some work of Pavel Filonov. We’d done quite a bit of Russian Art from the classic old icons to a range of the revolutionary era stuff. Somehow this painter’s name had never come up. Maybe because he just didn’t fit neatly into any of the course categories. Apparently he used to paint for something like 18 hours a day and live on potatoes and sustained this for quite some time. This cheesy romantic notion and his work really blew me away at the time. I kind of wished that I had such discipline but doubted I could ever sustain it. It would be interesting to try some kind of marathon sessions like this as an experiment. But I’m a bit of a lazy artist. I prefer to doodle than to make finished art works. If I can reach the point where I can doodle finished works that I like I’ll probably be quite happy. I still love Filonov’s work and I’m sure I’ll keep coming back to it.