I haven’t written here for a long time because I’ve been busy, both outwardly and inwardly, and haven’t had the discipline to delve into my various unhappinesses, those usual suspects, and write about them, even though I know writing about this stuff actually helps me see it a little more clearly, for a while. It’s [...]
Archive for the ‘Life, In & Out of the Studio’ Category
Myself am Hell
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, tagged dreams, Jung on October 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Black Box. Cipher. Plums.
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, Work in Progress, tagged dictionary, doubt, fruit trees, painting in progress, plein air on September 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I do not know who I am.
Is this what adulthood is like? You find yourself being carried along, heading somewhere, somehow, surprised how it all seems to keep happening, with or without your best or feeble efforts to make it one way or another?
I am painting the plum tree in our friend Tom’s amazing garden [...]
Family Ties
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, tagged crosscountry, moving, oregon, parents on August 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
My parents just left after a lovely, elongated weekend visit. I feel quite bathed in affection, good wine, and tasty food. Since Dave and I moved to Portland, I only see them a few times a year, which is quite a change after living within a half hour of them for most of my life, [...]
Mysteries of Adulthood
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, tagged I have the best husband in the world, Money, the goddess art is a jealous bitch, What IS the meaning of life for fuckssake?? on August 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Long, tearful soul-searching session with Dave recently on a Saturday morning, both of us in our underwear lolling about in the heat. (Side note: I am finding Portland to be an arid place this summer. It is relentlessly hot and dry, hasn’t rained in at least two months, and there are no lakes to [...]
Fundamentally Contrary to Human Nature
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, tagged fear, sewing, writing on June 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem. The fruit of the theory is the writing workshop, a combination of ritual scarring and twelve-on-one group therapy where aspiring writers offer their views [...]
Spring Fever
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, tagged apple trees, Studio on April 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The weather for the past three days has been glorious, fast-forwarded to spring, and then on to summer: sunny and hot, under clear, limpid skies. All the trees are ecstaticly flowering, and people have emerged onto their front porches, walking their dogs and babies, exposing white shins and elbows, everyone giddy with the sudden, almost [...]
The View From My Studio
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, tagged Studio on April 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Easter Sunday, after a dreary day of rain.
Support Systems
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, tagged doubt, failure, fear on April 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It’s hard to write about an inevitable part of artistic life without sounding like a self-obsessed whiner. But the truth is I’ve not been posting much lately because I’ve been in a bit of a hole. I wrote in an earlier post something about the act of painting being like skating out over a chasm [...]
Indeed
Posted in Life, In & Out of the Studio, tagged psychology on March 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It is very bizarre — I sometimes have a superiority complex and an inferiority complex at the same time.
— Opera diva Natalie Dessay, profiled in the March 2nd issue of The New Yorker
