Rooms

Rooms, rooms, freighted and filled with stuff.

Boys

boys...or alternately, the first conquest. how i love those turn of the last century novels. 

pathways

isn't it interesting, the different paths we take as we move through this reality? good, bad, meh, but all so interesting.

chains

what chains us to our lives, i wonder. sex, money, love? I can't believe the grass in that old house, several houses ago really, ever looked that green. it sure didn't seem that way then.
see? art is cheaper than therapy!

miles and miles

i read the most interesting essay by dominique browning where she says "what is next is what is now." and as i sit here typing i am humming to "we'll never be as young as we are today". Yup, now is now and now is what is next.

Sum

Another entry in my "art is way cheaper than therapy" project. I'm beginning to think of these funny little collages as self portraits.  A crazy jumble of past, inner, outer, public, private. I'm not sure I could sum it up of I tried.  I sure am having fun creating them. I had forgotten that art could be fun.

Framing your life

How do you frame your life? Framing it for your self narrative, framing it for your public narrative. I'm finally reading Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, and it is certainly dovetailing with my internal conversation.

tick tock

  What ticks louder, the biological clock or the professional clock? In the course of my job search I am getting the definite vibe that letting my biological clock quiet my professional clock (not turn off, mind you, but definitely dial down) was a very bad, slightly embarrassing thing to do. 

Owning

I continue to exhume my own reality - the one thing we all ultimately do own, I suppose. Are the good decisions the ones that lead to wealth and power? Are the bad ones those that take you deep into the ephemera of living?  Can you have it all and are you failed if you don't?

X marks the spot

Digging through it all, digging through u, digging through me.

Resume

How funny that I called my last post was facing the wall and this one is resume? Well, the last few years have not been spent facing the wall but changing and moving past walls (literal and figurative). Not a lot of painting (some. nothing interesting.) But now here I am, a new set of walls, a new place and the new need to put together a resume and begin a job search all over again.

 resume... résumé...my mind is wondering and wandering all over life, trying to make sense of the whole messy arc.  résumé. resume. walk away, return, public, private, sum it up, deconstruct it all.

Bits of white paper are my actual resume. bits and pieces of real life. bits of the big wide world.

Collage. art that is a little girly, i fear. or maybe the ultimate feminist art - objectify, idolize, marginalize.
or maybe just cheaper than therapy. and more fun than painting.

Facing the Wall

Jane Wilson, Restless Sky at Dusk, 2009, DC Moore Gallery

I am spending a lot more time seeing art in my mind's eye than I am actually making it. Part of my getting stuck comes from the disconnect between my mind art and the art that I produce.


If only Steve Jobs would invent the "from the mind to the canvas" app, the wrestling match between my mind and my canvas would be over.


I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day about a landscape painter, Jane Wilson. And this quote made me laugh (in a good way.) "You get stuck. You don't know what the hell is gong on. You get mad at the paining so you turn its face to the wall. And then one day you turn it around and you think 'oh, I know what's wrong. And why couldn't I see it before? ' But I couldn't see it before. So I proceed from there."


An 86 year old woman who is still arguing with her art! I think I love her. 

Fun with Landscapes

While my own painting has become a torturous affair, it was fun to read about Wayne Thiebaud and see his paintings. Especially this one. Much as I try, I have lost the ability to talk about art in any meaningful, intellectual way. Know what I love about this painting? The giggle inducing, roller coaster ride of the swoop and sway of the lines and the way the electric-ey purple color hugs the green.  Don't you just want to lay your cheek up against those two colors and feel the vibration? And then the way  that sharp vee of cool/hot green, purple and blue rise up to just tip touch the yellow. Delicious painting (no pun or play on all those cupcakes of his.)

For the smarter art analysis, go here. 

Green Daze

I don't even like working with the color green, so how did I get mired in this green hazey-mazey painting? Hmmm, could it be that I haven't changed the water yet, so I am rinsing my brushes and thinning my colors with  mucky green sludge? 

Yes, this is that electric colored painting, Sterling. Poor painting- death by muddy colors. 

Maybe the cooler fall weather will blow the cobwebs from my brain, the muck from my brushes and who knows- maybe a few months worth of old paint off my palette. 

Inspiration (or lack thereof)

Another beautiful thing about these water soluble paints- I can leave the studio for 6 weeks and the brushes can survive my neglect and disinterest.

No excuse for my  painting disconnect or maybe a million excuses- too hot, too distracted. Too much head scratching over art, maybe. Too little focus and a core boredom with my art, maybe. Maybe I can't answer the "why do this"puzzle. 

Stuffing a mattress indeed.

 Or  maybe it's cause I'm just not a  big, brawny, hard drinkin druggin guy, like Dan Colen. Those guys always have the most fun. 

Maybe inspiration, that unruly dog, will come sniffing back before the water dries. 

Sasha

.

Oil on canvas. 

I have never been comfortable with watercolors, but I find myself using these new oils as though they are watercolors. I may leave this painting just he way it is-water color like transparencies and all.

Sterling

Oil on canvas. The colors are a little too electric right now,  but I like the geometry of it. 

I'm getting swept away by those cobalts, veridians and cad yellows. (What am I,  David Hockney?) I love the swoop-ey line across the mid section.

Edinburgh

Oil on canvas.

I can't help myself.

Skye 2

Oil on board. Slowly layering on color.

Saturday Sketch

Charcoal doodle of Sasha.