the morning

untitled drawing; oil on vellum, 11" x 17", Rico '12

untitled drawing; oil on vellum, 11" x 17", Rico '12

what the water gave me

It's 9 pm and I've just completed half a dozen drawings and I'm trying to figure out what the hell just happened. For the past few months, I've been using butcher paper as a drop cloth for the small post-card studies. I looked at it the other day, how the paint worked with the slick translucence, and so I ordered some black vellum on a whim. When I look at these drawings tonight I see the physical manifestation of my dream from the holidays. The scale and proportion of these are spot on, and the translucent surface further pushes the x-ray read of these works. I want to go call my doctor and clip these to his light wall just to see them like that.

The lightening rod moments don't happen often, -for some never, way it goes. But this is different. This, -tonight, is a breakthrough; one I can't fully comprehend at the moment other than the hair on the back of neck is standing up and I'm going to type this and make some more to see if this is really happening. Nothing has ever felt so truly my own before.

I'll have to see in the morning, of course. That's the rub of being a night painter sometimes.

I don't want to stop.

It's as if I fully grasp my medium for the first time; it combines all the aspects of my vernacular as a painter. Drawing has been missing from my practice for too long and I've known it. Drawing is the meat of studio work for us all. You've got to put in the time. I have to see how it dries. It reminds of the early work in copper back in the 90's. How it's evolving and changing on its own after I work it.

and the first big black canvas is staring me in the face, "c'mon, what you got?"

Appalachian Spring

The first day of Spring is next Tuesday, but things have already heated up to 80's. The summer will be brutal, and resistance is futile. I work best in the Summer. I love to open up the doors on either end of the studio and paint and sweat and drag the canvases outside. If I could ever afford to build a studio in coastal South America, I would have endless Summers forever.

I got the shipment notification today that my canvases will be here tomorrow. Four big, black-primed canvases to enjoy and contemplate and mark and stain and scrape. Cigar smoke will billow and twirl and the staple of Southern Summer, -Mexican beer, will be stacked in the fridge.

There's a few bottles of good rum at the studio as well for the longer nights when everything seems to work and you have to just sit and wonder at it all.

sunday ruminations

sunday morning coming down like that song by the Man in Black. there's sunlight and jazz and week-old cigar smoke and paint under the nails and these things rip away the veneer of the week. for all practical purposes, spring has arrived and set up camp. everything is in bloom, my allergies are kicking my ass and tomorrow is a holiday; one to be spent mostly here.

there are hundreds of paintings in this space. no one is calling for them, but I keep making them because i can't stop. rebuffed with every attempt at juried shows I try, I guess I should feel discouraged but somehow I just don't. i feel alive and sure of hand.

four large canvases are on their way from somewhere in New Jersey. they are primed black for me and as such they are grab-and-go; a necessity in the madness of time that is marriage, parenthood, job and life. i've blogged many times about how my practice has become more efficient since the girls arrived. there's an immediacy and urgency to being in here that continues to take my work places it never went before. 2009 felt the year I started over, so perhaps I should cut myself a break for not achieving wild success yet.

I haven't painted with a brush for almost 3 years now and it strikes me that painting is, -at its best, a vernacular, -perhaps a creole. when you encounter something new and truly honest on canvas, it generally is also somewhat foreign, otherworldly. you can't fully understand the language, but you get the feeling. finding your voice and all that I guess.

prepped 12 post card canvases this morning in that brooding tar of mars black. so flat and deep and it feels like swimming in a cave lake in pitch darkness; in other words, liberating.

washes, stains, smears and drips and streaks. paint puddled into pigmented pools becomes alive and reaches out and explores and wanders...to be alive is to be in motion. you might not always perceive the motion if the life is titanic. but mountains stretch and breathe, as do oceans.