grip

The cold nights are coming.  Tonight I skinned the two large square canvases and managed to size one of them.  It's a formidable size; I cannot span it and thus am forced to contend with it in a very different way than what is comfortable.

I read some old journals, going back to 2011.  I'm not conscious of the struggles until I read old writings.  Reading these entries from two years ago, I was gripped by a certain hopelessness; and while the work continues to get stronger, I find myself always questioning why I put myself through this for seemingly so little return.

And then I drag myself out of the comfortable exhaustion of the day and out into the night and after a few minutes in the studio I lose all sense of time.  I'm not cold, I'm no longer tired.  My knuckles are scraped and nicked and I am alive in a profound sense of the word.  I grapple with these structures of wood and cotton duck and medium and I carve out some little moment of living.  Maybe people get that and maybe they don't.  Who knows why anyone likes anything?

I was speaking with a good friend of mine this weekend and he asked what my daughters thought of my work.  I told them they were honest critics and often their observations made me think because I tend to take them seriously.  One thing my daughters don't really do with my work is say things like, "I see a horse, " or "that looks like a dog."  At 7, they seem to grasp the idea that abstraction can be read without literal or direct associations.  They often will tell me how it makes them feel.  I know a lot of adults who can't talk about art that way, or maybe any more.