Junebug

Thick Southern air seeps into the skin and soul.  Summertime is candela wrapped cigars and studio doors wide open to the heavy night.  I am a summer painter.  I love the slow heat.  Undulating clouds of thunderstorms and distant tropical storms fill me with renewal and passion and longing.  Twelve-year-old Hukushu to round out the night and still the mind, unwind, and leave the rigors of painting and grappling with form and materials to another session.

Two paintings in various states of beginning.  A show in September to clear the studio of reassurances that come with lots of paintings surrounding me.  There comes a point where they all have to face the wall; one has to recapture autonomy in each new effort.  I have  stayed within the parameters I set last year and the work benefits each time, but I cannot become self-referencial.

My process is the slow grind.  Work and re-work, wait, dry, wait and re-work and wait.  Weeks and months; using accidents but then honing their power into something directed and labored which eventually looks spontaneous.  I am dedicated to the path of simplicity.  Simplicity takes discipline and patience and honesty in one's practice.

There's a growing body of work in the studio.  It is becoming intensely focused and deftly executed and at times I feel that I am watching it unfold and come into being as a passive observer.  I am patient and watchful and have no objective in mind save being in the moment of each work as I participate in the dance of painting.

A second glass and the night is still and quiet.  No trains now.  No distractions of the mundane.  Tomorrow I will visit the studio and see what I have to work with.  I'll push ever onward.