play

I found myself with a few extra bucks after paying rent for the rest of the year and was trying to decide between my planned construction project or materials. (It was then that I hit myself over the head with a bamboo stick). I bought a used Carhartt bib and to hell with it, I'm painting.

This year has been odd in terms of what's been going on in the studio. Definitely grappling with my influences and not yet free of them.

I need to work, and that work needs to be re-instilled with a vital sense of play. There's a magic in slinging paint and making a mess. The studio practice is, -for me, supposed to be liberating and (dare I say it) fun. I feel the urge to throw (figuratively) everything from the last 18 months into a blender, dry it and stretch it and see what I've got. Smearing, staining, scraping, tossing, hurling and beating the surfaces until they obliterate all sense of what I think composition should be. I don't know if I can do with this with canvas, I think I have to return to wood panels to sustain the intended beat-down I have in mind.

I have reached a point of acceptance in terms of the work not selling. At this moment, I'm free to do whatever the hell I want. No one is watching. So I'll go into the studio when I kick this cold and lock the door behind me. I'll come out next Spring and bring whatever has survived into the light of day. Thankfully, the warm days are not over. We may have a sunny, 70 degree x-mas again this year. That would be a boon.

To these ends, I'm going shopping for wood at lunch.