Around this time in 2022, Thanksgiving week if I remember right, I biked over to Blick and got a little Cotman student watercolor palette, and a 6×8 watercolor block, and a couple of brushes — I’d always wanted to learn to paint.
After a couple of frustrated months, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to invent painting, and I did the sensible thing, I got on YouTube.
Bursting into my scheduled post to say: Good Morning! I hope you’re enjoying the holidays! Santa got me a scanner, so there’s been a flurry of activity here in the furnace workshop.
It’s laundry day again, down in the furnace workshop. Everything’s sorted into little heaps and I’m here at the bench drawing the next page of I, Triangle Head while the machines chug away.
I’ve already churned through the guest sheets and towels. Now I’m deep into clothes, a load of denim, a load of tees and sweaters. Have I mentioned that I love doing laundry?
I’m coming to you from the Sunday before Christmas. The guest bed’s stacked away to a twin and remade for one (the cat, sleeping in the middle of the day). The presents are neatly wrapped under the tree, and I’ve been hard at work all week, scheduling my blog through the end of the year so that I can be present over the holidays.
I pulled out a few older paintings while organizing the workshop today and thought this one deserved another look. Yes, I know it’s not Thursday, July 24th.
So go ahead and have a look while I get my thoughts together.
I wanted to share a little piece of writing from this time last year, when the cat and I were only eight weeks into our acquaintance, and just embarking on our outdoor adventure together. The photos are both from our walk a few days ago, ft. the garden’s lovely final show of the season. Stay tuned for how it started, how it’s going.
Someone told me recently that I should be working on my art for me, not to seek recognition. Huh. Does it mean something bad about me that I see no reason to make art that I don’t intend to share? To seek recognition implies, I think, a desire for accolades. I do seek recognition, but literally just that — to be recognized. I see no reason to tell this story to myself, as I already know it. I want to tell it to you.
This year, a data loss left me with only a handful (here below, one of that handful) of the images of planets I’ve collected playing No Man’s Sky. Hundreds of beautiful coincidences of color and form and light. Crushing, though I do feel a little bit silly, being so crushed.
But they weren’t just random screenshots, they were an extension of my photography, something I poured a lot of creative energy into, and more, they were the references I paint from, so they represent this huge lost potential — now they’re all paintings that will never exist.
adventures 