For a long time, I’ve been so unhappy in the studio, and with my work. In fact, feeling miserable was the primary motivation for starting this blog a year or so ago. I wanted to do something that made me feel that I was at least a little bit connected to the outside world, that [...]
Archive for the ‘Work in Progress’ Category
Moving House
Posted in Thinking Things Through, Work in Progress, tagged working from life, fairfield porter, hopeful, connection on November 2, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Getting it Wrong
Posted in Thinking Things Through, Work in Progress, tagged fairfield porter, getting it wrong, hopeful, working from life on October 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
My painting is bad enough to warrant constant practice.
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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 [...]
Laziness. Or Synecdoche. Palimpsest.
Posted in Work in Progress, tagged jesse lichtenstein, literal-mindedness, poetry project on August 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
So, I started to write about the poetry project and instead deviated yet again into the litany of my discontents. Yeesh.
Did I forget to say how much I’m enjoying Jesse’s poems?
The main challenge in working from poems is that I’m so literal-minded, it takes me a while to get past the most obvious, pure illustrations [...]
Um, hello? It’s me, your blog.
Posted in Work in Progress, tagged acrylic, Euan Uglow, guerra paint, Manet, Titian on May 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much recently. I’ve been navigating some heavy internal weather and am working up what is likely to be a somewhat epic post about it.
In the meantime, here’s the latest with the Guerra paint experiment:
It’s going pretty well, but it’s really different! I’m still figuring out what the colors are [...]
Luddite Looking Forward
Posted in Work in Progress, tagged "Lead Balloon", acrylic, guerra paint, process on May 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In trying to finish this painting I spend a lot of time waiting for my eyes to see things in a fresh way, for an unexpected vision of possibility to jump out of the by now dull, locked-in, familiar sight. It’s like staring at one of those visual puzzles that have two potential pictures in [...]
Jack is Back
Posted in Work in Progress, tagged "Jack", alex kanevsky, plants, working from life on May 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I got a new plant to replace the mysteriously blighted vine I was using as a model for this painting in its earlier incarnation. It is a kind of camellia that can grow into quite a large shrub or even a small tree, and which one sees in yards all over Portland. It has dark [...]
Little-ease
Posted in Work in Progress, tagged "Lead Balloon", dictionary, doubt, finishing on April 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been bearing down hard on this painting, trying to finish it. Which can result in a certain amount of progress, but usually backfires after a while by making me feel completely burnt out. I sit and stare at the painting, sit and stare, and cannot think of what to do to it. It’s utterly [...]
Really, Truly, Almost Finally Finished
Posted in Work in Progress, tagged "Mote", finishing on April 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
One more pass over the body, and some finicky tinkering in the head-space.
Sweet lord, how happy it will make me to actually finish something. Even though—or especially because— it took almost a whole year. And is only 16″ x 12″.
