Ramblings Of An Art Student

I have a new word for horror! Deadlines... Deadlines are approaching! So many deadlines they are coming to get you like prowling tigers.They are everywhere and will find you and eat you, all of us. Poor students, poor me (insert sympathy). Why did I spend so much time procrastinating? Curse you past self! I am stressing out so much now, so much I even don't know what’s happening in world around me. My friends lost me from their radars for a couple weeks already because of DEADLINES. My equipment seems more alive … I think they’ve sprouted legs or something. But… the dreams. The horrible recurring nightmares! My sleep pattern is all over the place! I am so lucky Sion Hill campus is open late, so I can stay there to finish my work. Though…the atmosphere feels wrong… like when someone wants you to leave at the end of a night. Maybe it’s just the stress, but I swear that I've seen a white figure standing in the corner of the room… watching me like in my dreams. Once I turned real quick and the lights cut…it was horrid, it felt like hours waiting for them to come back on. I could feel something round my throat…something cold. I looked around to find the person who was trying to scare me… but when I looked in one of the studios I could see rough shapes like mannequins in pail light from window... There was another power cut and then everything became normal…I don’t know where the mannequins went. It must be students…it has to be. I feel like I’m dreaming…God I really need to chill and take it easy. Maybe I have temperature and I’m becoming ill. The worst thing that could happen to me! Or that I am becoming insane, crazy, mad... I think it is not enough just writing a blog. I need to make video blog as well. To keep myself under control and re-watch them from time to time. Maybe get some answers? Someone else has got to be experiencing this? Why just me?

Okay, so, this weird stuff is getting really, well… weird. I was talking to my housemate, and his girlfriend does photography. Apparently her pictures keep coming out distorted. Some containing a white figure, that was never there when she took the photo. He didn’t see any figures when he went with her on a shoot, yet the photos came out the dark room with it.  I thought that it was too big of a coincidence, so I told him about all the stuff that's been happening to me… he laughed. He thinks that his girlfriends trying to dupe him, that she’s doing some darkroom trickery…but you can’t make that stuff up with neg’s. I asked to get a photo none the less. He thinks I’m crazy, that the art students are just pranking me. Honestly, I'm starting to think they are pranking me… but something just feels wrong. Maybe my housemates are in on it too? Maybe some kind of psychological experiment, Derren Brown’s going to walk in any moment. If that’s the case I’m suing…but I’ll accept fame and fortune as an alternative.  

I'm here to babble at you again. My final piece is comingalong. I didn't realise till these last couple weeks how evil oil paints are.They just take so long to dry! Not sure how I’m going to finish on time! Note to self: start earlier. Then again I could drown my sorrows in Netflix. I mentioned a while back I couldn't die before I finish Breaking Bad, that’s coming along smoothly. Anyway, I've been working pretty late. Didn't know you could work so late, that your reality and dreams start crossing over. I do try to sleep. But when I do I have this nightmare. I'm in the studio alone trying to get on with my work when all I can see are dark figures in the corner of my eyes, statues just standing there... I mean I call Sion Hill Mount Doom, but I didn't expect it to come with Ring Wraiths. Then in the end I think fuck this and decide to double-time it down the hill, home. But the door was locked! They've got these window slit things… and in the dark I'm sure I could see someone. All in white, that unyielding stare again. Did it throw me a wave... I heard laughing then I just woke up. Cold sweat, a scream, the classic movie cut. I'm sure Freud would have fun with this... Why do I keep seeing this figure? Dose anyone else see it? If you do then please contact me! I need to know if I’m going crazy!

It was great being home for Christmas! Can’t believe I’m back already.

Housemateshave all gone home early. Rubbish! But I have the house to myself, so that means!Turning the TV up a little bit louder, listening to music without headphones, and walking around naked! Living the life. However I still have work to do. The dreaded essay! I practically live in the library these days. Not too bad actually, nobody bothers you in there so it's a nice place to relax. Well it was… it kind of freaks me out now. I kept feeling like there was someone there, which was fairly normal, until everybody went home and there definitely wasn't anyone else down there. Then I was looking through the shelves when I saw blood on the floor, dripping from a book on renascence painting. Curious. I opened it, like any horror movie victim would, and the Mona Lisa's eyes were bleeding. Like a demon from hell, crying the blood of the innocent. Creepy I know! I think I'm scarred for life. But it got weirder! I took the book to the librarian to see if perhaps, on the off chance it was actually a movie prop and I had gotten in the way of a student film. However when I opened it, the blood was gone. She thought I was crazy. I think the stress is getting to me, or the lack of sleep, or the overdose of caffeine. Actually now that I think about it, maybe all three. At lest I'm off for Christmas soon, which means free food, presents, and family parties with as much booze as you can drink. I'm going to live like a king! Unless I get sanctioned for my hallucinations!

Hi guys. 8 weeks in... stuff feels like it's getting serious now, so I'm going to keep this short and sweet. The work is finally kicking in full swing, gotta put together a research folder on portraiture not forgetting the essay too. So much reading! It's funny really... beyond all the theory about why that guy is standing like that or why the light comes from that direction, all I've ever thought about is how LONG you have to stand there... Thank god someone invented the camera so a selfie takes seven seconds, not SEVENTY HOURS. Not forgetting all the heavy psychological impacts on society. Who’s offended whom? Do I fancy my mother? I'm rambling! Though kinda the point. Anyway I’ve been hanging out in Mount Doom's library recently, staying late for research, reading (how original) and stuff.  Now this might sound crazy. But last night I was alone, at least I thought I was. Until, I put a book back on Rex Whistler portraits. Those eyes… those hollow bleeding eyes. They were looking at me through the shelf I swear! Like that masked ball dream, white figure bleeding eyes… I don’t know.

Hay! So I survived the flu. I’m not a zombie, as far as I’m aware… anyway I’m getting fitter from walking up that bloody hill. The only advantage of having a campus on the hill is I can look like Wolverine, without even going to the gym.  More money for alcohol! Though that might be a little counter productive…ah well you know what I mean. The scenery isn’t so bad either, walking through the parks with old trees loosing leaves and looking creepier and creepier every time I pass them. It’s a bit like the sky has veins. Feeling inspired, so lets talk art!

Thinking about doing portraiture for my art project. Trying to explain why people don’t just be themselves and hide behind…well a mask. So I’ve done some serious research in to the history of masks, found some information about why people wear them them. Also some interesting facts about masks. For example, did you know that masks were also used as methods of punishment or shaming. There not all carnivals and masked balls as I thought before I started my research…Kinda creepy really. Masks were also used to intimidate enemies in war, not only protecting the face. Interestingly in lots of cultures masks were used as soul keepers, so the soul can recognise the body when it dies, if it wants to return. Did they stop this because it made zombies?

I hate that hill! It is pure torture. Why did they think it was a good idea to put a university on top of a huge hill with a bus that only runs every two hours! I should have chosen Birmingham, which has real transport and no mountains! Doesn't help I've caught the infamous fresher’s flu. Honestly, the idea of having to climb that hill has made me miss a few lectures. And by a few I mean about a weeks worth. But Netflix has kept me such good company, as it always will. Hopefully I'll be healthy again soon, or dead. Either way it'll be over, though I would prefer to be alive, I still have Breaking Bad to watch. This fever has given me the weirdest dreams though. There was the one where I was stuck on a giant cupcake and had to battle a gingerbread man army. What a delicious war that was . But I had this other one that really freaked me out. I was at the fresher’s masked ball and everything was normal, people dancing, cute girls ignoring me ect.. I was stumbling hazy eyed, people looking familiar but I couldn't tell who they were, and I was just stood on the edge of the dance floor watching someone make a fool of themselves. When I saw this figure all in white stare at me, with hollow black eyes and crimson stained cheeks. I tried to move towards it, but it was gone. Vanished. Then something pushed me, I woke with that horrid falling sensation. I also had this other dream that I was climbing the hill and it kept getting longer and longer, then my legs snapped off and rolled down to the bottom, so I had to drag myself up to the top, but it never ended. I think the flu is cooking my brain. Anyway. Hopefully I will survive this killer flu, and get some work done to show you guys soon. However if you don’t hear from me, well, Netflix. 

Hi whoever reads this, my name is Swanman021, you can just call me Swanman though and we'll get along fine. This is my blog, I was told by teachers time and time again to get out there, have a voice and share my work. I guess it's time to get cliché.  I'm a fine art student at Bath Spa uni and as I've said, I still don't know how I got here. From getting lost in the wilderness of the Midlands to missing halls of residence and ending up in a student house I wondered for a while if maybe I was cursed to wander this valley of steep steep hills forever (more about that bloody hill another time), but no more! Through chaos and calamity I finally got here  and so far it's all good. I guess I should begin at Fresher's Week, we had a Gormley inspired furniture sculpture in the kitchen for a bit. God I wish I had pictures, maybe I could have snuck it in as coursework... It crashed over at 4AM and we all thought the apocalypse had come. In the last seven days I've also bought a Netflix subscription, as much instant ramen as I can to fill a  3 by 2 foot cupboard and a heavily increased tolerance for alcohol in a cruel but sweet mixture of shame and appreciation for low prices. I guess the best part was the masked ball, cross between American Horror Story and carnivals in Venice with alcohol thrown in the mix. Anyway we now begin the second week and I feel like some explorer, 'do not go gentle into that good night', hell yeah. I finally get my studio space tomorrow, one of the first times I scale that terror Sion Hill, think I'm just gonna call in Mount Doom from now on... I wonder if they'd let me plant some kind of victorious flag once I got there? Maybe I could just camp on the grass each day I'm going to be working there, having the cardio of a sloth really makes you innovative. Anyway, I bid farewell to any whom I am shouting to out there, maybe someday I can make you reading this ramble worth your while, until then it's time...