As soon as you open your mouth to speak, or start to type, readers and listeners are wary.
We have come to be suspicious that words are the servants of spruikers.
Spruikers though don’t see themselves as such. They see themselves as honourable, as helpful as carers or nurses are to manage the needy.
My Blackboards are out in the wild. They are not sanctioned by art’s noble institutions. They have to make their own way in the world with no prospect of being ‘collected’ or picked up by later curiosity. The best prospect they have is to be represented here on the blog.
Balckboard after hours. 12th August, 2026
Eyes as subject has been well covered over time. It’s hard to put eyes in any picture, whether portrait or genre, without resorting to cliche and convention. Eyes alone is audacious anywhere. Happily nothing is at stake at ‘Ciaothyme’.
Balckboard after hours. 12th August, 2026
Without the benefits of a conventional frame that a gallery or book might offer, the Blackboards survive in a context of interruption. They are disrupted by not providing a safe space for reflection.
The Blackboards propose that art has gone soft in the usual art places. The Blackboards argue that in the usual places art has no prospects.
Phone drawing to describe how the No Standing sign could be straightened.
I sent this drawing to ‘C’ to suggest I could straighten the No Standing sign with my crane, to improve the setting for the Blackboard. It is a folly to imagine I could ‘improve’ the space by providing less distraction as this bent pole provides.
The accidental making of a nose by including it here is drawing too long a bow.
Phone drawing of the No Standing sign as a nose.
In the absence of no other information, or clues, we make do with what we have. The eyes are winking. We assume they belong to the same face, but do they?
In the lengthening Blackboard conversation this Blackboard develops the potential dialogue between the two halves that Ciaothyme offer.
Blackboard by day