girly me

this was a photo of me and my dad.... a long time ago taken by edward acker..... i was so ucomfortable
i think because my father was uncomfortable at times .....with me being so girly.......

i drew madison yesterday i will post a few

hee is one,.... the photo is from my camera so its just an ok version
madison is going to mexico for 4 months in the winter
ive drawn him here as he came back from his parents horse farm
and had baled hay for a week

tim's show

my ex boyfreind tim is having a show in chelsea
heres the info

Paul!

I’m in my first Chelsea gallery Summer Show — at the George Billis Gallery on 25th Street.

Opening Reception is Thursday, July 10.

Only one painting this time – but it’s a BIG one!

Craig and I are at the Cape, then I’m home working on the house until July 6. I’ll be out of email contact until then — but you can CALL me — if you want...

Love,

Tim

George Billis Gallery
511 West 25 Street
presents

“City Light”
A Cityscape Group Show

July 6, 2007 - August 16, 2008

Reception:
Thursday, July 10 6 - 8 PM


The George Billis Gallery is an exhibition space located in the heart of the Chelsea Art District in New York City. The Gallery was established on March 25th, 1997, and was the 12th Gallery to open in Chelsea. In January 2003, the Gallery relocated to our current location at 511 West 25 Street on the Ground Floor. The Gallery features work by both national and international emerging and established artists.

http://www.georgebillis.com/

martha wainright

its around 430 and i am listening to martha waingright singing on you tube
martha is my new favorite of the moment...
ive been watching her sing "bloody mother fucking asshole"
... which made her famous awhile ago in europe
YouTube - Martha Wainwright on Jools Holland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBk-gMnA7Jg&feature=related
but i also like "when the day is short"
and " you cheated on me" and "the car song"
there is a great dynamic hearing such a sweet voice
singing those lyrics.... and seeing martha in her very
girly dress and great shoes...... rhyming and singing
dirty mother fucking asshole.... its a bit ironic
and seems similar to what i am looking for when i
combine bodybuilers, nude men,
bugs and furniture......its like erections and
flowers ...... sort of shocking but sweet.....
paul

collaboration with artist from the netherlands

this piece was done with seiko an artist from the netherlands
we did this around the time he was doing fashion week in NYC
and the world trade center fell. seiko was photographing the
fashion shows ... and had an opening two days after 9/11

he was having coffee at a cafe near where his show was taking place
and he took pictures as the plane crashed into the wtc... they ran all over
the european papers and i
picked him up in nyc and brought him back here to northampton.
it was an awful time..... he suggested the collaboration and it worked
paul

ART AS FLOW

THIS IS A DISCUSSION I HAD WITH MY THERAPIST AFTER I WROTE HIM ABOUT MY ART
AND HOW ART WAS DESCRIBED AS A FLOW BY MY SISTER ANNE... ALSO AN ARTIST , A PSYCHOTHERAPIST AND A BHUDIST

i talked to anne about the theory of me not wanting to sell my art...
she disagrees and said if i had someone to market it i would in a
minute but that i dont want to deal with the craziness of the art
world... and also to understand that art is a flow... its a flow from
you to people from people to you..... the art isnt so much like a
product as other things
it more than that.....

anyway our session had some outcomes .. paul
Reply
Forward
Gerald Schamess to me
show details 10:23 PM (14 hours ago)

Reply

Dear Paul,

Well done!

I'd like to hear more about the idea that art "flows" back and forth between people. For me, it's an intriguing thought.

See you Monday.

Gerry


Reply

its an anne word " flow "
i say it in a different way.......in zen they say we are awareness....
which is the same as spirit what we say in the
west...... i told anne that art was more than just a product and that
was difficult to desbribe to people.....
the process it seems is more important for me than the end result
..... the process of drawing includes pencil paper and
model/item.. and me......there is a connection between me and the model
there is a flow happening....

a blend of flavors.........not only is there physical stuff
happening. hand movement ... thinking... emotions ,,,,thought,,,,
attraction....there is a connection .... what is seeing and moving my
hands is awareness

the flow from the model to the artist is always happening ....the drawing
represents this flow

what i wote on my blog in april


MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2008

drawing as truth ????????????????
what i understood today after listening to adyashanti is that
awareness is what i am.

he came to understand his truth because of his writing

the real truth that i have given to be communicated is through
my line drawings..... that is were the truth began. for me....

for years i just
wondered who the
hell made that?????? who did that drawing????? where did that drawing
come from????? who am i if i did that drawing ???????

it puzzled and alarmed me
many questions
started there
disturbing questions ..these questions made me afraid because they
threatened who i thought i was

what i ultimately realized is
that i am the drawing too... not only am i
the drawing what ever i draw...the model .. flowers ... bugs ....are the drawing along with
me...

a simple way to understand how everything is what we are .... paul


the individual being drawn blends with the individual who draws....
the connection produces the lines on the paper ...and the marks on the
paper are what result...... the marks are your own marks but would not
be possible without that connection.........and for them to work there
has to be a trust and a vulnerablity,,,,, you have opened yourself and
they have opened them self.... it works the same with flowers, or
chairs or anything.....the connection with awareness is the same.....

another aspect of the flow is that the person who ends up looking
at the dawing is also part of the flow.
for the end result( the art) is truth... awareness at play .... and
those seeing it are awareness....... spirit..... and the whole process
happens again........still the mind is interpeting probably
incorrectly .....but the blended image from the flow or conection
between me and the model has produced something that is based on the
models awareness and my awareness...... and is being seen by another's
awareness......

does that make sense ?? paul

understanding that i am not just a gay white man who draws....that i am awareness ...is freeing
but difficult to remember .... to realize that our bodies are devine from the one..
and knowing that they will disintegrate like styrofoam cups ....yet everyones awareness is the same
only our born bodies different.... still hasnt totally taken root in me.....
not differenciating between you and me ... is fantastically difficult

paul

drawing as truth ????????????????

what i understood today after listening to adyashanti is that
awareness is what i am.

he came to understand his truth because of his writing

the real truth that i have given to be communicated is through
my line drawings..... that is were the truth began..... because i just
wondered who the
hell made that?????? who did that drawing????? where did that drawing
come from????? who am i if i did that drawing ??????? many questions
started there and i realize that i am the drawing too... not only am i
the drawing ...the model ...the flower ...the bug ....are the drawing along with
me...

a simple way to understand how everything is what we are .... paul

madison

i like this drawing of madison holding foot... lots of action and i think an amazing drawing of an amazing model

some drawings

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w175/pseidell/model1.jpg




[IMG]http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w175/pseidell/tomagain.jpg[/IMG]

my new favorite romantic dead singer is jeff buckley.... he drowned in the river in memphis 

made only a couple albums and sang leonard cohen's song halleluja ......i used to love rufus wainwrights version better but since have changed my mind and now love his  even better ,,,its the most heart breaking .... and it is a piece of art... which i am trying to match.. but dont think i have yet....

here is his site www.jeffbuckley.com

today is march 9th and i remembered the date hurray

i went to therapy and discussed life in ft myers... visiting my dad 's trailer park between walmart and home depot...its for him the best place on earth...i talked about visiting a community without kids.. an over 55 one and no pets allowed...very surreal.....

i wanted to photograph my aunts house ...my sister did photograph her closet and its colored dresses
red red red . pink pink pink..purple purple purple. yellow yellow yellow teal teal teal rows or colored clothing all in order in the wrap around closet my uncle built her in the manufactured over 55 village in north fort myers
her house prior was a huge stucco thing in a gated community that she sponged with violet paint and had huge barbie collections all over the place ..everywhere violet and barbies .. i was so sad when she sold and i hadn't taken photos for an imaginary show i envisioned in nyc......... my uncle hasn't married her but they have been together for years ..he was an auto mechanic and she a society lady who's father was VP of mass mutual...just photographing them could be wonderful they have so much character....... this is what ft myers is to me .... India has its holy river and city where they burn their dead and bathe.... we have Florida

my friends came to visit and stayed in my dads driveway in their vw van ..i kept asking them to come into the house and stay in the big bed on the lanai... which is really a big tin porch ...but for some reason they wanted their van... whats the difference a large tin porch or a small tin van???????

..i asked my sister about why my relatives who retired have become strange...
her suggestion as to why was because they felt they had no more power to make any change in the world...

after therapy i had to bother my friend who manages a gallery in town/northampton and made fun of the art work... without Ritalin i get a bit overbearing... but he is a lovely guy and accepts me as i am
then onto amious to have lunch...its a morocan restaurant . i chose my meal based on the nine dollars i had in my wallet
i chose lentil soup, lemon cheesecake and tea. my favorite color combinations .....lemon...cinnamon and white ....

out to car and a ten dollar parking ticket
its a wild world isn't it???

going home to listen to lilac wine ...being sung by jeff buckley......my new favorite song

paul

home sweet home

i am home and listening to jeff buckley ..which makes one a sad....... i had planned very important things today
but instead i am listening to jeff......blues rock ...or soulful ....... but this picture is what home is for me a
messy bed in the sky.. paul

goinh home from florida on friday

i made no art only a few crappy drawings,,,, and discovered how i felt when i was a teenager it all came back in one day....  i was at a little hippie restaurant in pine island .. my father hated it and i told him  you need to stay in your perfect spotless little life in your trailer park... which was my angered thoughts.... his was to say shut the fuck up ......asshole reliving the past isn't so great.........................the story of the past in my mind is much better than what the reality was,,,
things look good and tropical and lovely......and they are... but even if you are living in paradise it doesn't help when you want to be yourself and you aren't accepted,,,,better to be in the cold and be free....

Paul Seidell's chart of how to solve a problem

I meditated today and after the meditation I looked at how I tried to solve a problem i had with my sister's kid

these are the steps i took and it may help you see how a mind with A.D.D. works and why it takes me so long to do something other than art

Problem is that i am anxiety ridden over my niece and sister and had concerns

these are the steps I took just to speak to her about it

anne called when i went home mon went to therapist..... got worse upset
called gen
emailed friends tim phil susan
called helen
emailed helen
emailed helen
emailed tim
emailed phil
emailed susan
emailed dad
emailed anne finally
called susan
called helen
emailed tim
emailed phil
emailed therapist
emailed annes therapist
called tim
called susan
called dad
called gen
emailed helen
emailed helen
emailed phil
emailed tim
got promptly sick
emailed anne
called helen
meditated
saw my really round about way to speak to anne about my concerns

paul

leaving for america

i found myself not part of american culture ... well part of it and then told i wasn't and believing it

i grew up with my mother....father....aunt mary...grandmother.....two sisters and my aunts gerry, and Frieda ..who would visit with their combined 15 kids ..... my uncle came for coffee every morning.... after my father left for work at 6am he would smoke and have coffee with my mother ..... then go off to work at the same time as my aunt would go to her job at the hospital and my grandmother to assemble toys for milton bradley...

i usually got up with my grandmother too and aunt... i would have coffee and a drag on my aunts cigarette ....and dunk buttered royal crackers in my coffee then go back to bed and be woken up by my mother who always gave me a bowl of rice crispies.....


my mother was the only mother who stayed home in my extended family.... all the other women worked;;;and usually were making more than the men..... I came from a group of italian women...... i wonder if the women work and made more in italy in the 1960s?????????

i thought everyone lived with their whole entire mother's family around...... later i discovered that wasn't true... and felt bad for the rest of the united states......

my family appeared quite modern and had beautiful clothes and cars and everything one could imagine having in the united states in the 60s... but we lived in a very tiny home...it was called a cape cod house and had just 4 very small bedrooms..and housed seven people with lots of visitors.....it was communal living at its best.... my mother and grandmother cooked magnificent italian food ...and my mother tried to make an american meal every sunday ...roast beef and potatoes... the roast beef would always be very over cooked... and my aunt would complain Phyllis why do you have to make the roast like leather????
but she never listened and would continue to make leather and every one would eat it ..... and besides she got a new thing called an electric knife....... we would have coca cola and leather beef and iceberg lettuce
very american my mother would think....... the rest of the week was filled with unbelievable italian food and i would wait for holidays that would encompass weekends so we would still have the home made feasts.................

strange and terrible things happened to my family as we live our lives separate from the Americans as my mother would sometimes call other people... but she never thought of herself as not american... only when speaking of they....................................... growing up this blond,,, blond boy with a german last name in a household of women from a neapolitan background ..... who lived as if they were still in naples was odd and a little confusing ...... the rules they generated i couldn't really understand but i did live by them....
when i was 16 my father decide to bail and then returned when i was 17....
and said come with me
and that was when we had to leave to live like the rest of america........... i cried
and cried and was beside myself as we drove away from the small cape cod house
i ended up liking the freedom that the new america gave me
but still mourned the old country which was only a few miles away
my grandmother died the following year
i felt pain... but i lived in a new country now and life was different

paul

fishing on land

when i was a kid my father tried everything to get me to like fishing....
he still goes fishing on the ocean every week,,,,, I used to go fishing with him for pumpkin seeds... i think thats what we called them...but i ended up catching cat fish..... who could enjoy catching something identified with cats....???????????????? i did enjoy fishing until i got caught with a hook... which was really painful ......
my father didnt give up ... he bought me a lot of poles and strung red striped bobbins i think that what they are called...they are little white balls with red stripes and you attach them on the fishing line....
my dad attached them with out hooks so i could practice my casting.....
i loved it
i casted all over the yard..... it was much nicer than the pond
thing was i still hated fishing i only liked casting
what i really hated was seeing those fish with hooks in their mouths and their big eyes looking at you as they died or flopped about in the pale... only to end up under my roses as fertilizer....
my cousins ever the macho men would step on them and pull the hooks right out of there mouths.. i was grossed out
but my father did have night crawlers
even though night crawler seem like some horrible thing they werent
they were large worms
my father would go out at in the evening or after it rained and collect the night crawlers and
put them in a box with leaves in the garage
for some reason my sister loved them and would name them as pets
her pets kept disappearing as my dad fished ..but he would replace them and convince her they were the
same old worms
i thought she was bonkers but it turns out we all were a bit
and thats ok..... paul

Bugs

Today I have been wondering if our basic beliefs of things change ..... I had a vendetta against japanese beetles.... there was a small plaque of them when i was a teenager and they ate up everything in site...... my crazy father bought me a spray pump and poison to shoot at the apple and cherry trees... i was completely on a mission to kill the beetles...... but they kept coming and eating all the leaves off of the trees... and i kept up the crazy battle against them.... as i sprayed the beetles they fell like rain off those trees and the next day they would be back..... i would cough and gag as i tried my best to save my grand purple trunk cherry tree.....in the end the tree did survive ...the beetles left for the most part on there own... and a new pest came the gypsy moth.............. today i am fighting ants in the summer that come into the house............ however i now draw the bugs and incorporate them into the art...... i still have a vendetta against ants but its nowhere near my fight with japanese beetles .... still has the belief that they are bad and me good changed in any significant way????? maybe........ they seem to hold there own in my art....... my aunts and cousins were terrified of bugs and would scream over bees, moths and black crickets that would hide in the laundry... when i heard their scream i felt a little superior.. i still do.... cause i had my spray pump full of insect poison........the strange things our minds make up to feel better about oneself...... paul

mokeys and cherries

Monkeys why are monkeys appearing in my art? maybe because i just recently got in touch with a kid i went to school with
he now has a twenty -two year old with his own son.... his name is Wady Vado, I visited him in Costa Rica in Jan of 1980
we went on lots of adventures there ...we stayed at his cousin's house .... a house in the jungle
with. huge trees that had quite a few mean monkeys. in them...
the monkey threw coconuts at us if we came near.... so ever since monkeys have not had a good reputation with me...
then again
the monkey might have something to do with Michael Jackson and his zoo / amusement park ... I have been listening to him and sent songs from his disco days out to friends.... I find myself having compassion for him and also viewing him as evil.. the monkey is part of his Neverland estate..isnt that what he called the park???? Neverland or is that a fruedian thing?? never go to MIchael Jackson"s home it is a fairy tale with a vicious ending.....

On the other hand cherries are a good sign... I had a very large cherry tree in my yard as a kid in Feeding Hills, Ma and I spent most of the summer in it.. not when it flowered.. too many bees.... but when the cherries came out i sat in that tree and ate every cherry i could reach................... When i was a teenager the girls in my art class would ask me to say cherries
which at the time came out like Chaireeeeeeess .... and they woud just laugh and laugh... my eastern accent and nasal voice amused them terribly,,,,,

What I do know about is flowers... I have always had an affinity for growing flowers and gardening in general... when picked on which was often i would escape to my garden and virtually live in it for the summer... when i was around sixteen, my dad walked away for a year and at that time i was persistent in asking my mother if we could move to Hawaii....and even bought her several surfing magazines to show her how fun it would be... i was an odd kid... who thinks of their mother on a surfboard????
I was given several chances to visit a few years ago and just decided not to....I cant explain why.......

My friend Madison appears as the blue, yellow and sometimes purple guys, usually in threes , looking down on the happenings in the picture... I have a feeling Madison does sort of view me as some sort of strange man.... and so his watching is appropriate.........

the chairs are chairs i ve had in the past ...they stand in for me.... they are me..... sort of just an object.... who looks out....

All of the bodybuilders are from the 70s and 80s photos
when they were iconic.. and unapproachable ..well for me anyway........

The designers fill in for probably my mother ,,, he is the one in the boots.... he is there for protection and has a sort of look on him that says .....What now Paul????????

Athough my mother did identify with butterflies and had them taped on her dresser mirror..... they are not her...and do not represent her.... when i drew the peices and saw the butterflies appear i strongly identified them as my mother"s.
...what are they there for????? ........because they are her's ...a sort of gift in the picture for her.. which is pretty strange in itself ..but they are a gift..... i suppose since my mother died years ago its the only way which I can give her something.....


I have been feeling rather invisible lately and so i have taken pictures of myself as reflections in the glass covering some of my framed drawings... maybe I will post a few..... its the perfect way to say I am invisible without words and show the I that doesnt exist..... Paul

close ups

awareness practice

more of the space...... paul

zen awareness continued

more photos of my space....









odd the more aware I am becoming of my little dream world the more I hold onto my little space in the world and make it more like my paintings.... paul

zen awareness

I started an awareness practice ... i called in to a web broadcast on Cafe Dharma ,,, Adyshanti;s site and I spoke to Loch kelly a zen spiritual advisor
I spoke mostly about the sharp ,,,heightened emotions i am experiencing and its effect of me limiting people in my life and changing my environment.... what does that mean??? why am i changing most of the colors on the walls of my home???? changing my rooms is not new but painting them in the colors of my art is something weird ...... what"s going on???????
he said when i become more aware its going right into my heart ... and to get space behind the heart..... i did not understand so he guided me through awareness of the body starting with my left hand and ending with my toe on my left foot.. it was very beautiful and the clear soundless non thinking me came out and finally there was a way to understand what he was saying.. the experience was as if time stopped and i was in eternity.. i was enternity itself... and it was joyous.... paul

These are my rooms since starting the awareness practice

new piece

a new sculptural piece I decorated before going to florida