Straight from the brain...

Hello...yes, it's me. I've been a bad blogger recently; when was my last post; more than a month ago? Ouch.

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting for you all to get a bit of a glimpse into my brain, through some journal excerpts (compiled by yours truly). Writing in my studio journal is an important part of my studio times, even when I'm there for only two hours, I still make time to journal. And I write about everything from the weather, to thoughts about next steps on paintings.

So, here are some excerpts; hope you find them interesting, and occasionally insightful:



Tuesday, August 1st, 2006
"Be skeptical of all answers; field all questions."

Thursday, August 10th, 2006
"I need to get myself to slow down; I haven't painted (besides hearts [a work on paper I spent a lot of time on last summer]) for awhile now, so I'm impatient. (Talk less; slow down; think more.)

Thursday, August 17th, 2006
"...up late last night, going through mortgage/house stuff, papers and discussing house colors, etc.
Anyway - this is a studio journal, no? Oh well, all of life is interconnected; it's our flesh that tries to keep the parts separate."

Wednesday, October 11th, 2006
"Began laying out pattern on panel...a shape which reminds me of the pattern my mother uses for quilting a quilt edge - a sort of offset scallop pattern."

Thursday, October 12th, 2006
"...began stenciling shapes on to large door - it really reminded me, as I added each successive shape, that composition complication adds up very quickly. I reacted against the existing white 'shape' (brush pattern) for my first teardrop shape; reacted against that reaction for the second stencil, and so on...each time it became harder, and took more concentration. It reminded me of a short worktime we'd had with an artist, at Messiah - Boothe? - something. [Powers Booth]. He had us look at a still life, and first concentrate only on the verticals, then the horizontals, then the diagonals, etc. It quickly became, with all that concentration, information overload - I felt my spidey-senses saying, 'Whoa, slow down - too much!' A very revealing exercise...in several ways."

Thursday, October 19th, 2006
"...continued with gesso shapes on door - the composition is still working, but now vastly more complicated. It will be interesting to see what color does for it. Intuition again will kick in, as that 'isolated' element reacts within itself."


Okay, that's enough for now...more later.
CIVA conference this Thursday through Saturday...
www.civa.org