A lot of artists have traditionally lived in squalid warehouses or have had awfully messy studios caked with decades of paint. Some though can be super clean with little to no mess. I think as an arty type I am somewhere in between both extremes. My working environment can change depending on the medium. Yet I will always clean up after a charcoal session for example. My Dad was quite messy. There is a fine line between art and madness. I guess I have to be on both sides of the fence. I would always say to my Dad when he had an inspired idea, draw it or paint it. I guess that was how I found my way of getting those strange ideas into some type of form, even if it was two dimensional. My Dad though collected all types of things from the streets. He had old radios, portable televisions, clothing, food. For most people, it made no sense but would have looked great in a white cube style gallery. You walk into the clean air-conditioned gallery walking over the polished floor boards and there along the gallery floor is Dad’s collection haphazardly arranged. In that clinical environment, anything looks good but when you walk into a strange home and see a collection of refuse infused with thoughts far from what you think of as homely you start to worry. It is all about context, isn’t it? Yet for my Dad, that is just how he sees the world around him. I must admit that it has been hard to cope with at times. Even my Dad has reached that point at times. Where the world, a jumble of scattered objects seems suspended in a fall that is within the mind and continues to fall even though everything is still. Some of us are powerless at the hands of our broken minds. Waiting for some type of miracle to make us perfect.