New work on the burner.

It's been a while. Stuff went down, most of it was a mental block, and my studio practice suffered greatly. Some of the stuff could be explained with my day job and various stress factors that accompany work, but the honest answer is that doing what makes me happiest is the hardest thing I've ever done. Even though when I actually get to work I'm completely content, the thought of doing it sets up all these walls.

Here is real honesty and real exposure. I found that completing a piece has only gotten harder since I got the studio a year ago (A year! wow/sigh). I finished more work when my studio was in my house, even though I hated that arrangement. Since I got to the studio I've started a few things, and then I promptly got to work stopping myself from completing them using any number of excuses. I cringe when someone asks me how the pieces are going, because they aren't really, and I feel damn guilty.

So this month has been about getting over myself, actually hauling myself out the door. It's about fighting inertial slide all over my life- washing dishes, going to the gym, not watching too much tv, not hating a piece and chucking it out the door because it has minor flaws. Spring cleaning in my soul.

In that spirit of amnesty and recovery I've stepped away from my big planned series that haunts me. I'll be back at it soon, but in the meantime, I tricked myself by starting a work in tandem with helping someone else make a piece. I told my wussy subconscious that this piece is simply for me, for fun. It's not "art" it's a personal home decoration. And that instantly helped. (Even if I'm lying to myself. Because work is work, and there's no reason that a piece I plan to keep can't also be real art). If it's serious work, then I freeze up. Even if I know it's a good big idea, if its worth doing, maybe especially so.


So I'm working on a fun painting about sidewalk cracks. I'm going to try and put up more process shots on this blog- just showing how things go from concept to physical piece. Thus far I've spent 3 straight days painting in a background and then taping up a huge canvas freehand (I did do two small study sketches). Here's day two's progress:

On day three I traced over my tape (surprisingly  white artist tape on cream canvas is hard to see) and checked out how I was doing. I decided I needed another 5 hours of taping, which is what this photo shows- black lines are where tape already was, pink lines are a map of where I decided to add more tape.

The last two or three hours of day three I actually got to start painting the colors in. I want a riot of rainbow acid neon candy colors.  

So there it is. How I spent 3/4ths of my long weekend. I wish I were there now. I wish I were there every day.

PS If anyone is in a certain SoCal city known for earthquakes, palm trees and movie stars and wants a decentish drafting table, I have a table top and frame that need a few spare parts which you can get from the company, or could be easily mcgyvered by a handy person, and I'd give it away for free because I just want the thing out of the space. Someday I'll have to write out the long form story of how I came to own three table tops for this drafting table and then got the company to give it to me for free, and then ended up paying full price for a totally different table. It was a pretty crazy time.