same place different day

and slightly different set-up

visiting my brother

this is what i saw

this is where i was

this is what it felt like

mural studies

workin' up some ideas for my community mural project...

lying awake

not that i often do
i am usually exhausted by the time i get into bed
(it's the book referred to here)

surprise

almost a month ago i bought this artichoke
i thought, to paint
so i put it in the fridge to help it last longer
and
forgot about it.
when i found it, it was rather dried out
and a bit unappealing
and i kind of forgot about it again

today i picked it up
thinking it was long gone
but hoping to find something interesting about it to photograph
and guess what...

trust me on this

i am not sure why these are "from the studio" today
i just know that they are
perhaps they are a poem
this was

some synchronicity

for the first time in ages
the rain came down in buckets
it was a welcome change

and i continued finding little bits of meaning
and moments that made some sort of sense

some support

the corners were bending in
so i braced them with chopsticks
i keep trying the oils
but it's not clicking
i've turned off the computer and done some reading
i think i have an idea for the mural project

hihihi, a fellow lx3 user, tipped me off about a 1:1 upgrade
that's my eggplant on the left
and on the right
my neighbor's cuke growing through to our side of the fence
which i will eat
:O

review

i thought it would be a good idea to look at these,
6 months into this series
as a little review,
for concrete evidence that i am actually "doing" something
and for ideas for the panels i intend to design
for the mural project that we are doing in the community

i expected to "see" something
to "recognize" something
that is what usually happens when i review months of work
that i have never seen together
but i scooped them all up
almost as quickly as i put them down
because i "saw" nothing
and the faith that will sometimes manifest
was nowhere to be found

i did clean off my desk area
which was starting to get out of hand again

working on play again

don't ask

some things...
are better left unsaid

protected

so i listened today,
i listened to that little voice,
i made these double layered covers for the flower drawings
so that i could safely return to oil
because i had an inkling that i might want to
i washed brushes that had been sitting for months
and then i tried
unfortunately,
not too successfully

scissors

some days

not sure where all this high-key activity is coming from

this was hard

to get to the difficult places on these drawings requires some extreme measures
this was a bit scary,
all day i was resisting working on this,
an when i finally painted
it was a different flower than the one i had intended

wanting more poetry

i did
i did want more poetry from these images
but i have to settle for this
i have been "organizing" for days on end
not my physical space
but my mental one
part of my dissatisfaction seems to be stemming from
a lack of defined goals
which has resulted in
never having a means to experience progress
never knowing i have moved forward
never feeling accomplishment

purple and then some

so after having made a painting of this flower yesterday
this is what i see in the brush water today

so yes
just like the purple separated to blue pigment on the bottom
and pink suspended in the water
it did more or less the same thing on the paper...

and this...
something else i found

more small things

i have been intending to stick to a schedule
but when i am this messed up
sticking to anything
works for me

a world of my own making

and the making of...

things i made today

i did anything (and everything) that came into my head today

clearly it didn't amount to much

it was an awful studio day actually
filled with relentless self recriminations
which i call truths
it seems to have gotten a little better towards the end