Ronald Simonar's Blog, page 3

TIME DOES NOT EXIST!

Time
has always fascinated us. What we find interesting is of course not time itself
but rather the changes ‘time’ brings. The difference is that time is a mental
exercise, the division of the duration of one event into the duration of
another event. Thus, if the duration of a single Earth rotation takes one day, Earth’s
orbit around the Sun takes 365 such periods. This mathematical exercise exists
no more as a corporeal thing than the distance between the White House and the
Capitol when divided into the Earth’s circumference. Neither exists except in
our imagination. That genial mathematicians playing God have anointed 'time’
with tangible existence does not make it any more real. The math in their minds
is just a bit more advanced.

How did ASGARD PARK come to be?

I wanted to visit Albania after the death of its communist dictator Horxha when the xenophobic government was falling apart. Visas were impossible to obtain so I flew in to see the situation, arranging for their Minister for Sport to meet me. The man was delayed and had not seen fit to inform anybody so I was guarded by soldiers with worn machine guns out on the airport tarmac. It was my only time as an enemy of State. I traveled across Albania and saw the misery for myself, the silent despair, and when I left, I had the passport of the Minister for Sport and family in my pocket. This former wrestler, hoping to emigrate, was so terrified that he broke down and vomited while seeing me off. That more than anything brought home to me how much people feared the State and how vulnerable even high officials were. Earlier, this passport treachery would have cost his family a lifetime in the camps. But what about the common folks that were destitute of any rights in a country where faith was treason. Were there holdouts among them that put a secret trust in God? And could God be trusted?

I started writing Asgard Park on returning to the safety and comfort of my splendid patrician villa in a fashionable seaside resort in Sweden; in another world.

When people refer to us humans as ‘Intelligent Design’, are they talking about the hardware or the...

When people refer to us humans as ‘Intelligent Design’, are they talking about the hardware or the software?

When people refer to us humans as 'Intelligent Design', are they talking about the hardware or the...

When people refer to us humans as 'Intelligent Design', are they talking about the hardware or the software?

It beats for me

I have painted all my life; mostly in my head. Nobody else will ever see those pictures. They will never be bought or sold. They are my own. They will die with the painter. It is the purest kind of art. The undernourished rest that escaped, did so almost in spite of myself. I was never into that. The larger market did not interest me enough to reach out a finger. I knew that in the end, they would demand the whole hand. Decades ago, I had two large one-man shows in two years, works that were easy for the public to love. Both sold out. It left me empty. All they showed me was a life of toil to fill demands that were not mine. I never held another one. 

The critics and the gallerists have always claimed that a painter should have no other mistress than his art. I certainly had a houseful of interesting mistresses, all of them beautiful. Not that I was a Casanova who'd fuck anything that moved. I simply had other interests that aroused me, even more than art. When I occasinally turned to painting, it was to express a sensation of fulfillness. Is a painter who is blessed with a perfect life and does not slither about in mental agony, worth a second look? Well, I really don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks about my heart. 

It beats for me.