As promised

Day One: The Reincarnation of The Last Abstract Painting
(in progress)

Not that you would have known I made a promise, because I deleted it this morning, due to the mysterious rant about my STBX that made it's way into my post via some kind of trance I must have been in while writing. I allotted way more time than I should have wondering if I had spent the entire last year ranting about my divorce in public. In a quick search I only came across maybe three posts that used the word directly. Four, if you count the fact that I referenced my first divorce. Not bad.

Nonetheless, here you have a day of working on flowers. It's quite a bit more than a day, because underneath, and behind the flower, is an abstract painting formerly known as The Last Abstract Painting, a painting that for all practical purposes was finished, but needed a higher purpose.

My covenant was to start a flower painting and document it at the end of every day.
Since I don't know how many days I worked on it as TLAP, we'll roll over the time clock and mark its reincarnation, (sorry, can't help it) as day one.

Begin:
Today I googled Manet's last flowers. Again.
Most of them seem to be at the Musee de Orsay.
There is a book titled The Last Flowers of Manet. It is available used. I have not ordered it. Yet.
I almost gave up on wanting to paint flowers, but I didn't.
I can't or don't want to start a painting by flowers directly- I need or want to have time to play on the canvas even if I am taking on a destination.

The more interesting the photograph, the less likely I am to want to work from it.
I am slightly intimidated by the history of painters who have painted flowers.
Flowers have a loaded history. So do landscapes, but flowers are so pedestrian and yet, there is something compelling about painting such an ordinary still life.
I feel slightly constrained by the thought of painting flowers, yet I want to.
I am going to document the painting and the process every day.
The flowers I painted were not really the flowers in my studio. You might have figured that out.

ARGH! What have I done?!

Yeah, let's have a little freakout. I'm working on a commissioned project and I'm thinking, "No big deal, I'll grid it out and wham, bam, I'll be done with it." What the hell was I thinking? I abandoned the grid system. It seemed stupid and silly and I deemed it impossible to pencil in a layered wash. I've set the timer, so I can track my hours more accurately, but since chucking the grid, I keep forgetting to turn it on. I'm struggling on this one. Maybe I'm being resilient to order and structure or maybe I'm just being an ornery bad ass.

Tuesday was busy. First off, Kristi came over to pick up a painting that sold and I served her a fine cup of coffee accompanied by 100-year old piece of raisin bread from my freezer. (I HAVE to get to the store.) We chatted about some business stuff. Art world politics are still a mystery to me. I'm not that much into astrology, but as an Aries, I'm on the verge of shooting myself in the foot on a daily basis. There's something that's still bugging me (albeit less and less) and I know there are three choices: I can play nice and let it go or I can speak my mind and never work in this town again. My gut instinct is always the second choice However, the third choice is that I let it go and secretly think, they'll never work in this town again.

After KE left, I had to go on the other side of town to meet my divorce lawyer. I'm lame. I completed most of the paperwork, but the whole stack looked like it was put together by a drunken spider. And then, of all days to be running 5 minutes late and NOT take the motorcycle. Traffic finally came to a standstill downtown. I was stuck in the same place for over a half hour. Cars are jumping the median. I considered it, even went so far as to turn the wheels, but no, I'm in the fancy, impractical car and there's no way in hell I'm gonna jump a curb in that thing, so I wait. My first thought was a traffic accident- it's the freeway after all, but for some odd reason, and I will chalk this up to my psychic powers, I had a flashback of when I first moved to Chicago and was living with a friend in Skokie. They lived just off the 94, aka The Edens expressway. Traffic had come to a standstill and didn't move for about 2-3 hours. Some guy had pulled a gun on himself in the middle of the freeway. I can't remember if anyone was in the car with him or what the deal was, but it was a buzzkill for everyone's evening commute. So I'm sitting in traffic on the 110 North thinking about the suicide guy in Chicago and it turns out there's a bridge jumper less than a mile away from me. Firetrucks, oodles of cops- he jumped and they caught him in the tarpy thing and he lived. I, on the other hand, was an hour late to the lawyer's and missed another appointment altogether. I could hear the sound of the cash register at the lawyer's office. I have no idea what the point of that visit was, yet we had a conversation for which I will be billed. I could have mailed her the paperwork. I had buyer's remorse the whole time I was there. Then to boot, she asks if I am teaching for the fall and I still don't know and she's says, "If it were me, I'd be nervous." No, really, ya think? I missed a 3 o'clock meeting back at my studio, but got back in time to meet a friend and another artist for dinner.

Okay, as amazingly personal and revealing as I am on this blog, I try to not sound totally nuts, but here goes. I think of myself as highly intuitive although I never associated this trait with my art until a secret conversation I had with my advisor in grad school. She brought it up, saying that my work was intuitive and even though it was an incredibly uncool thing to acknowledge, to go with it. But instead of making a connection between art and intuition, I've always associated this trait with my mother. And because of this, I was never gung-ho on being intuitive. In fact, I found it quite annoying. Whenever I told her something she would tell me she had a "feeling" I was going to say that. I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes and yet, I too, have these moments of precog. I assume everyone does, but maybe not. This is all to say, that when someone asks me if I'm nervous about not having a teaching schedule locked down, I feel compelled to reply, well, yes, but really in the back of my head, I'm not. As little as I DO get out and leave my compound, I do meet people and sometimes those meetings result in fortuitous events. Even when I don't leave my studio, I make connections with people. At this point in my life, I'm 90% sure I'm spending a good portion of my time productively going in a forward direction. I was supposed to be in the studio 30 minutes ago, but the extra few minutes it took to write this paragraph may fit into the bigger picture somewhere. That's my theory today.

Now I'm off to the studio to tackle the painting. I have an ice cream break planned around 3 pm and I HAVE to go grocery shopping tonight. Tonight's reward will be The Wire. Season 5: Disk 4

There's also some grant app and job apps I NEED MUST HAVE to apply for and bills to pay. I'm busy, it's all good, but I could really use an assistant this week. This weekend is busy too.

Whateverness and Other Revelations of Revolution.

Well, I'm slowly shaking off yesterday's oddness. The cause of my discomfort was that I quite suddenly and unexpectedly got the feeling I was being fed excuses about something and that if one excuse was solved, there would be another one in its place. And for better or for worse, obviously worse, it reminded me of my marriage and how at a certain point, there was always going to be some problem that was not fixable: No use working on X, because there would always be Y. If we addressed Y, then there was X. So now that I've identified that unhealthy and slightly, albeit not entirely, irrational connection, I can pretty much dump it in the 'whatever' file and move along. Which is quite funny, because as I was thinking that, someone on FB had posted a link to this video by Liam Lynch which has made me laugh all day. Okay, maybe not ALL day, but it was a good laugh. How did this guy escape my radar?



I'm in the process of pulling some paintings from storage and placing them back in my studio. One, it's just easier to have them here for studio visits. Two, in a perfect world, I could give up my storage space, but three, sadly we still have stuff in a larger storage space and among some of my worldly possessions that I cart from city to city, is an antique Jenny Lind spindle bed frame that belonged to a great aunt or grandmother and I have no room for it at home. It's a tad quaint and unsexy as hell, though it's a four-poster bed, which gives it some sex appeal, I suppose. It would make a nice guest bed. Problem is, I don't have a Victorian era guest room. Or do I? hmmm. [Lightbulb]

Okay, suddenly, it just occurred to me that I could rent out the spare bedroom as a guest room type bed and breakfast thing to maybe other art people types. I'm in Culver City, walking or at least bicycling distance to downtown CC. It's centrally located on the west side. Several restaurants are one block away and the YMCA is one block away. I'm going to seriously look into the legalities of this.

Other news. A smaller, not smallest painting did sell. That's good news. And as soon as I log off, I'm going to begin a day job project, except that it's almost night. I just need to get started.

Lollygagging for a day.

I spent the day lollygagging and shooting the breeze. Most of it was pleasant, though there was one unsettling occurrence. That’s the best word I can come up with for now. Nothing tragic or seriously disturbing, just odd. Not quite square peg in a round hole kind of odd, but odd enough that I’m still obsessing on how odd and I still don’t know what to make of it. Art World politics and decorum are not my strong suit, and possibly because of this, I try to be peripheral. I know it must sound strange to want to be marginal in a place where everyone is hoping to stand out and be #1, but when all is said and done, I’d rather be content with what I’ve done, rather than worrying about what other people thought or what kind of mark I should have been making. Not very playerish of me to fes that. I have no idea what it would be like NOT to have art be such a major part or THE focus of my life, (Well actually I do, there was a period where martinis and manhattans were a major focus, but I digress.) and yet, on occasion, I've been able to have meaningful conversations with a few select people about something other than art.

I so need a vacation. [refrain]

Yesterday was the last day of the semester. Yay! Tough 6 weeks, but they pulled through. I still have to calculate grades, hence today’s agenda of lollygagging. I did however spend time answering a former student’s email and was quite touched by the fact that he had sought out my response to a project he did for a design class he just completed. I won’t go into detail, but apparently he had caught quite a bit of flack from some “left-brain engineers” as he politely put it, about his choices, both conceptually and aesthetically, and he wanted to know my opinion. He sent me a jpeg, outlined the project and told me his rationale for what he did. I was happy to reply.

Usually I wait until the end of the semester to show images of my work. This semester, I did not offer that up at all. It seemed like a lost cause. I had a student this semester who told me she couldn’t see the still life because she had gotten tired and decided to draw slumped over with her head propped up on her elbow. A vortex of apathy, I tell you.

I so need a vacation. [refrain]

I have an appointment with the divorce lawyer next week. I cannot believe how long I’ve dragged this out due to mere procrastination. I have let moss grow on that part of my life. Change must be the answer.

I so need a vacation. [refrain]

Oh and I hate to spoil this, but if you’re hooked on "The Wire" and have not finished the series, turn away now.

Omar is dead. I thought I would be way more crushed when it happened. Of course I knew it was coming, and there was even a moment of foreshadowing that made it obvious how it would play out, but still, I imagined I’d feel the same way I did when Wild Bill got offed in Deadwood. I swore I wouldn’t continue watching the series. I did of course. And even when they show Omar in a body bag in the morgue, I had a moment of suspended disbelief in hopes his eyes would open and he'd wake up, only to realize it was “The Wire” after all, not “Lost” or “3o Days of Night.”

I so need a vacation. [refrain]

I'm going to quit talking about the paperwork.

But FYI, now I have to inventory ALL my artwork made from October 24, 2001- March 1 of 2009. Legally, 50% of everything I created during that period is community property. I won't go into the emotional aspects of this. I've made peace with that.

Natch, I should have been keeping up with my inventory anyway, but at a certain point, say 2 or 3 years ago, I stopped obsessively documenting and cataloging about EVERY single piece I made and got a little lax on some things, like works on paper and paintings that were going very sloooooow, like so slow that I'm sure they're still not finished.

Then I purged a few things. Plus, the Titling Department hasn't earned their keep in months, lazy bastards- so even though I would photograph a painting and import it into the computer, it lives like an inmate known only as, DSC_1390, or some other anonymous name that Nikon decided until the Titling department can get their ass in gear. Lazy bastards.

I'm getting a bid for building a painting rack this morning and then I'm going to be grading portfolios until class starts.

Yesterday I saw the doc, "Herb and Dorothy." It was a charming and fascinating look at collecting. The little Chamberlain that's in one of the first shots IS amazing. Absolutely, amazing. Here's a clip of that scene.


I have promised myself I will start doing yoga again.

Tonight is divorcepaperworkpizzaparty night and I can hardly wait...

I'm kidding on the can hardly wait part. But in trying to make the best of it, I've scheduled a pizza for delivery.

And of course, I'm still attempting some form of personal style before I walk off the premises. I admit to being one of those women, or perhaps, THE, only woman out there who hopes my ass still looks fetching in a pair of 501 jeans. Currently I'm down to one pair that's still working for me. Buying trendy jeans is such an ordeal and I'm quite over it. I'm not 30. I'm not 40. And unlike the rest of freaking LA, I don't want to look 20 or 30 either. I'm down with holding 40-something. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.


My feet couldn't take the black shoes again today. I believe it has taken me 6 years to break-in the above shoes.


The painting on the left is a work in progress. It was the one I accidentally left out overnight. Here it is pictured next to a paperback. LaRose might categorize this comparison as Syllogism.

Yes, I thrive on a reward system. Doesn't everyone?

I still have non-art related paperwork to do, but I made a huge dent and thanks to my ever-shortening attention span, I accomplished much yesterday. I live so dangerously. All it took was one question that required more information than I had at my fingertips and I was able to seamlessly leave the computer, pick up a paint brush, make some strokes on a canvas, wipe off my paintbrush, walk in the house to attempt to retrieve said information, only to become further distracted. Why yes, I would rather be painting. I purposely don't wear paint clothes in the studio when I need to do paperwork, thinking, obviously mistakenly, that I won't paint in nice clothes. Roulette, I tell you. I think I escaped with no oil paint on the nice clothes, but by 6:00 pm I had, HAD, to suddenly refurbish the breakfast table which I've been absolutely loathing for some time. The table top itself was fine- it was from the appropriately titled, "5 o'clock room," at my aunt & uncle's old house- but I was SO over the chairs that it would require a separate post to explain.

In order to be economical, I would keep the table top and use my vintage Arthur Umanoff barstools as the new chairs. This required table surgery. I removed the old base and decided the Vika Artur trestle from Ikea would make the perfect new base. My worktable in the studio has been on a set for years. The height is adjustable- perfect for us non-committal types. By 6:30 pm I was sitting in traffic on my way to Ikea in Burbank. By 9 pm, I was loading up the car with the Vika Artur, 2 throw pillows, a scatter rug, a new shower curtain, a bath mat, 4 new cereal bowls, and a new bed pillow. By midnight, I had put together the table legs and had completed my home decor jag. Perfect!

I made a casserole because that's what we do.

Warning: personal. To skip directly to art content, scroll down to Paragraph Two.

I am in sadness today. We've had a tragedy in the family. Not my immediate family, but Matt's. I made some phone calls and a casserole. I haven't been able to work in the studio but I haven't been able to concentrate on much anything else either. Everyone else's life is going on, the wheels of commerce are still being greased and yet for some reason making art seems like a choice today. I don't want to make a black painting. I don't want to make a painting about death or the details surrounding it. Stepping in the studio to continue yesterday's trajectory using yesterday's palette doesn't feel right, but there's not much else I can do now either. I dropped some hints earlier, but Matt and I are splitting up, so it's a particularly difficult time even without the added weight. The bright side, if I can say that without sounding vapid or glib, is that death brings out what's important and removes the petty shit. I've been able to drop my stuff and place someone else's feelings ahead of mine for the day. Tonight may be a good night to catch up on reading and writing. I'll probably be flying across the country again this weekend.

Welcome to Paragraph Two:
I mailed my 2 little watercolors back to the Santa Monica Museum of Art for the Incognito show (May). The most creative thing I did today other than make a mac & cheese casserole from scratch was to title the watercolors. Titling is a serious endeavor for me. I don't like slapping a title (no matter how good) on a painting unless it fits the painting. So, sometimes, a month or more can go by and I'll notice that the painting has the wrong title if I cannot recall it immediately. When this happens I have no issues with changing the title if the painting is still in the studio. And needless to say, I don't like paintings to go out with the wrong title. I don't think they ever have because usually there's a lag time between the making and the showing or selling. Maybe I make too much of a big deal out of titles. At one point in my work, I had an elaborate alpha-numeric system and believe it not, knew more or less what each piece was. But then the whole thing got out of control, not to mention, it was rather robotic.

The titles I came up with today were,
"Portmanteau" and "The Girls Can Flirt And Other Queer Things Can Do." Of course, I know which is which. So obvious, right? I posted these about a month ago, but at the time they were untitled, so here we go again-

Pictograph

Some Things.

The art world is super small, crazy small. I'm not talking about the online arts community or any of that, I'm talking about the nuts and bolts world of people who buy art, people who sell art and people who make art, and at some point those paths cross in the physical world.

Like this past weekend, which is how I discovered that a painting I thought was hanging 2000 miles away in a private collection is actually hanging here in Los Angeles in a private collection. I was at an opening and dealer I know showed me a picture of my painting on their cellphone. And, in an even bigger coincidence, the collector was at the same opening, so I had a chance to meet him and chat with him about how he acquired my work. It was a nice conversation. He's an amicable gentleman.
Everything's legit, apparently just some really bad timing and delayed correspondence. And I might add, an error in judgement on my part, for which I am now wiser. If the sale had taken place in California, then this link would have been useful.
(Addendum: I'm still open to the possibility that there was no error in judgement and no bad timing and that things happen for a reason, and I'll leave it at that.)

***

And then this morning I read where my comrade in a parallel universe, Steven LaRose has decided to fizzle out his blog. At first I was bummed. I mean this is not a eulogy or anything, but there are certain artist/bloggers who, whom I was particularly simpatico with and LaRose is one of them, and so I will miss the dialogue. FB is just not the same.

***

I may be posting less as well, not as an intentional desire to quit writing, but when writing about things such as life and art, and art and life, it seems that messy things are well, messy and best omitted from the public spheres. And when I start having to omit the messy stuff, then I feel self-censored, which is obviously my prerogative since I am the self doing the censoring, but there's a fine line between revealing what I had for breakfast, what I'm doing in the studio and how I'm managing a couple of difficult things in my personal life. It's hard to pull the strands. My goal is to keep working as I'm working, work a little more than I think I'm working (see Perceived Exertion scale), try and be more fearless and have some faith.

I'll place the twitter feed in the side bar. Just in case...