Kind of bummed I missed the 24 hour abstract comic day

Corner Piece, 2002-03
watercolor cutouts on paper, pinned in a corner.

I have something like 200 or more of these individual shapes that I cut out and arranged in some kind of narrative fashion back in 2001. See my first blog entry for details.

Had I stumbled upon that link just a wee bit earlier, I would have gladly participated.
They starred in a couple of solo shows and all of them are scanned. They're just waiting for their big print break. This is when an assistant would come in oh-so- handy. Such the conundrum. Perhaps deferred pay or points on the back end.


I have a clean studio after a 2-3 day overhaul last week. There are still some things to organize, but the palette got scrapped, the desk cleaned and misc. papers and drawings put back in place.

Then out of the blue I woke up with itchy eyes. small body aches and a dull headache. See the back of an Ibuprofen bottle for more. It snuck up on me. I'm better now, but still a bit tired.

I've been giving private lessons to another artist a couple of times a month. If there is such a thing as painting completely opposite of someone, she paints completely opposite of me. The headache could have been attributed to her accidentally bringing noxious mineral spirits into my studio space as opposed to odorless mineral spirits. I didn't think it would bother me, especially sine we had the doors open, but I forgot how sensitive I am to toxic crap. I've been using Gamsol OMS for quite sometime.

Her work is highly representational aka realistic, nearly photo realistic. She asked if I would be interested in helping her loosen up with her work. She can render anything, something which I have no interest in doing and I would be hard-pressed to tell you it's a secret desire of mine. It's just not. The camera was a fine invention. Thank you, Daguerre.

Obviously the above statement is somewhat of a lie seeing as I am referencing photographs and painting abandoned swimming pools during what I now refer to as my mid-life painting crisis. If I start painting chandeliers, take away my paint brushes. I have a 3rd (or 4th, if you count last year's) pool painting in the making. They are slow going- mentally. It's more like studying for a huge exam, knowing there are only X amount of questions that will be asked, but not knowing exactly what they will be until you get there. Then the exam starts and the answers flow out. That's represnetational painting for me. I'm sure I'll think of a similar analogy to bastract painting, but I have to go now.