a painting or a photograph

Last weekend I was cranky and feeling like I had made a series of wrong decisions in my life, or maybe just paid attention to the wrong things, or not done the right things. Like, if I had painted more I would be better, I mean really good. If I read more I would be smarter. If I stuck with yoga my back wouldn't hurt in the morning. Stuff

like that.

Dell said, we better get in the car and go somewhere. So we went to Sauvie Island. And it was drizzling lightly and everything was quiet and beautiful and full of possibilities. So I took some pictures. To make a painting? Or just to be a beautiful record of the lovely world, while I am here to see it.

Maybe I could still be a really good painter, there is so much to say. Although, there is nothing I can say better than the Oregon light on the bare trees in February.

Does it always have to be this way?

Do I have to be in the studio at the eleventh hour, making a mess, ruining perfectly good tubes of paint and cheap Chinese brushes? I always want to begin again, but end up just adding on. Maybe we just have one good tale to tell in our lives. I am still waiting for the moment the last piece comes together. Like a miracle, you make a mark that you didn't know was in you and it's just right. Let's hope there's one more mark...

Sean Scully says "It seems to me that there are highs and lows, and that there have been periods that are, I would say, less creative, where you're simply holding a position, and there are other periods where you feel you have breathed enough air to be able to exhale again, to be expansive again."

I'm filling my lungs....

new year's resolve

Just meandered in from the studio to check in with you all. Not sure where I am headed yet, but feeling like I am all over this show, I mean it's not for 3 weeks (I think, right?).

I made one new year's resolution. To take a picture a day. I know, it should have been a drawing, or to work every day in my studio, but I decided I just had to start looking. That, and go outside, because I refuse to shoot with a flash, so in this dark month I have to go out to find some (any) light.

So here are a few observations from the first week of the year. I guess I should go paint, but everything is wet...so maybe I'll just lay back on the couch with my novel.

Back home

Hey blogger pals,

I am back from 2 weeks in beautiful Oregon, a much needed rest, time to look. I thought a lot about space and how to find it in life. I have been visualizing a daily calendar where the the block of time for painting is the biggest block, well, at least bigger than it has been.

Here are some things I saw while I was away....

I have been reading Resistance and Persistence by Sean Sculley. He says "I was always looking at the horizon line, at the way the end of the sea touches the beginnings of the sky, the way the sky presses down on to the sea, the way that line is painted...I think of land, sea, sky and they make a massive connection. I try to paint this...coming together of land and sea, sky and land. Stacked in horizon lines endlessly beginning and ending, the way the blocks of the world hug each other and brush up against each other, their weight, their air, their colour and the soft uncertain space between them."

When I was young and I drew pictures, there was always a gap between the land and the sky. The sky was at the top of the page and the land at the bottom. I wonder now, what was that mysterious space in between?

What the world gives us

About this time every year I head to Art Media and buy myself a tube of cadmium green light. I think, this is a new color for me. I bet no one is using cadmium green light these days. What an unusual color choice. At some point I wake up and look around and see the whole world is cadmium green light. It's exploding overnight, everywhere. And better then what's in my tube.

It's the amazing gift of a visual life.

Recently, I only seem to work either really small or too big (too big for my budget, paint ain't cheap). This painting is 5 x 7. I have never outgrown a fascination for the depth you can create on a tiny 2 dimensional plane. I am the tortoise and not the hare, making variations on this over and over. This is how the estuary at Gearhardt felt this winter, but it's really a tiny bit of paper. Amazing. To me. My needs are simple.