Cardiff Museum currently has a wonderful exhibition of Impressionist's work entitled Highlights Of Impressionism.  I was kindly invited with Sebastiaan to attend with Open University tutor Ant Howell and Open University BA students.  Despite having long since graduated from my BA in Film I always feel out of my depth in an art gallery, as though everyone knows what they're doing there except me.  Seb expressed it best when he said it was like being a child at a grown up party.  Naturally I find these images to my tastes, I have been well conditioned to their aesthetic ideal, as have we all.  I have inherited the necessary visual language to not think about what I am seeing.  And so I work hard to find some way to deconstruct what I am seeing in much the same way as the Impressionists were doing.  It is this habit that has defined the 20th century artist.  Seb noticed the audacious longevity of all the artists, save perhaps Manet, who had the decency not to exceed his 52nd birthday. I pointed to the deliberate beginnings of the artist being more important than the art: here are my brushstrokes.  Seb and I are both resentful towards and yet hopelessly trapped in the age of celebrity.  We both resist and are yet enslaved by modernity.  If I were half the artist I wanted to be then I wouldn't have a website, I most certainly wouldn't be tweeting.  Yet I feel very strongly that I ought to be blogging, tweeting, doing more.  If I were doing more then I would be invariably blogging and tweeting more and yet the doing steals time from the reporting of the doing and vice versa. 

This is one of the reasons why I find Twitter so intriguing.  The people that are doing more are also tweeting more.  You certainly cannot sustain any sort of following on Twitter if you are not doing anything of note, but you also have to report this doing in 140 characters or less.  I was excited by Twitter at first because I presumed that this restriction would save time, transform me into a regular blogger/tweeter...doer!  Of course the exact opposite is true, this creative limitation of 140 characters or less demands more of your time.  Either you have to be more of a doer, your life already rich with spellbinding schedules and fabulously famous friends or you have to pen your tweets with the intelligence of a poet.  I try to aspire to somewhere between the two, but the truth of my artistic life is best expressed by the painting at the National Museum of Wales I came to look upon for the longest time, The Rabbit. 

I urge you all to see the exhibition, it's free and runs until 15th August.

Van Gogh made the artistic choice not to show the Goddess in one of his last and greatest paintings, cornfield with crows, but you would have to be virtually blind not to notice her. The painting gives one an unbearable sense of imminent death. The paths lead nowhere, the horizon looks like the end of the world, and those crows: the birds of Rhiannon (see: Mabinogion). 

In the humble cartoon on the left, we see another cornfield with crows. This time the artist was not in the mood for symbolism: there she stands, fierce and magnificent.

Nice picture of a pop-mythology redhead with pet.

Indeed, so undaunted does Little Red Sonja appear by the looming figure, that we are forced to conclude the two are in cahoots. The outstretched claw seems to be directed towards whomever is attempting to face the duo down off-screen. Perhaps it is us, the viewer.

Sonja certainly looks like she can take care of herself, but besides her prowess (sword), the background figure emanates from her as a further warning to the challenger: I may look kind of cute, but cross me and I will visit seven kinds of hell upon you.

Most significanly, the picture reminds me of the backdrop image on our Myspace page: two sides of the same coin co-existing in an uneasy and fragile truce.

xx

Besides being the singer of Ridinghood, Rhiannon is a Welsh mythological character. She is a moon goddess, muse to the poets.

Robert Graves calls her the White Goddess, but concedes that on account of her identity as Triple Muse she might also be the Red or the Black Goddess. White corresponds with Virgin or Life, Red with Woman or Sex, Black with Hag or Death.

In Welsh Mythology, the birds of Rhiannon are harbingers of death. Upon hearing their song on the battlefield, a warrior knew death was imminent.

The Triple Muse inspires the poets, but at a high price: they pay for her patronage with their lives. 

She appears in many forms and can take on multiple identities.

Joe O'Neil, the fantastic man who believed so strongly in Ridinghood and had been representing us this year passed away today. We are devastated, Joe really "got" us and made us feel that we could achieve anything. We will miss him so much. In an industry of non-professionals, Joe always understood and appreciated great songmanship, it was refreshing to work with someone who had such a depth of musical knowledge, amazing experience and a great acumen for music business. We were truly blessed that Joe laid down his roots in Wales and the Welsh music industry will be a poorer place without him. There will be a celebration of his life details of which have yet to be announced. We will post any news here as soon as we know something. We would like to send our love and condolences to his family and friends.