we now return you to the Rico Act

I got in early tonight and have been working non-stop until this moment. Red has come back; there are about 12 paintings that are really about red in various moods and presences. I continue to wrestle with the first of the large canvases and this is a match of Jacob-like proportions in that regard. Everything is slower right now, but this slowness no longer discourages me. I am where I need to be, as if somehow I actually set up this moment a few years ago.

Time away worked its magic on my soul, and the combination of a few things have born a focus I have heretofore not known in the studio. Part of this is that I have begun to truly apprehend my new tools (mostly masonry knives and squeegees), and thus my use of them is becoming more absorbed into my physicality and therefore more unconscious. In drawing classes I learned to reconnect the hand and the eye. In connecting with my tools I extend the hand.

Good things are before me; breaks that I have longed for but apparently have not been ready for until now. I may have found my back door into Atlanta, a market that has eluded me for some time. All art scenes are small. That is often the hardest thing to remember. I've made art about relationships, not money; and I've become wealthy in my acquaintances and rich in my knowledge as a result. One hopes these things endure, because we have learned that lucre does not.

My wife's family is from Memphis and we have a lot of people along the Mississippi. My heart goes out to everyone for whom the water has risen. Indeed, water has returned as a thematic element in the work right now, -perhaps in some part because of the floods.

I'm hesitant to post photos right now, I feel vulnerable and protective of the work at this moment. There is so much work in here. -more than 100 paintings of various sizes and styles. There is always the temptation to destroy; to harvest the wheat and discard the rest, as it were. I live in the "now" in here. Sometimes it is difficult to consider what has come before and to see it as if I have never seen it before. With the body of work I have produced I can see recurring ideas and suggestions of ideas to come in early pieces. One wonders how accurate that is in the end.

I think I finished the last of the reds tonight. They can dry and I can break into my third crate of canvases. I'll post pics soon.