oldie, goodie

 

morning pages

I didn't this time, but really must start to do these now, as a practice, they popped up in my mind, I casually mentioned them in my last post, and then, Saturday night I think, randomly turned on the HBO remake of Scenes from a Marriage, circa 2021, not even going to the episode I had previously been on last year I guess but instead, skipping ahead to one where they are not only present but become a point of contention: Oscar Isaac is in therapy, doing his pages and he wants to keep them private, except he does want to be seen, of course, and Jessica to know about their contents, to exculpate herself from whatever they might accuse her of, and so they fight about them, these pages, plucked from my own consciousness, in the now...

As I once wrote somewhere else: an image is given, and from the image rears the serpent godhead. 

Usually I can very well look within. Today, though, it is easier to look back and out, and perhaps even ahead.

Landforms rising from sea, who are you to me

I feel sick of myself, the movie Patrick saw but I never did in the end, and tentative in language, especially in this brief jaunt back to the "United States", which is kind of a painful place, and as I said over text, nauseated by the wind beating down on the family mast, wind I knew was coming...wind I even tweeted about, and my father sent me a "sad but true" message and now here I am. I am trying to be calm, in integrity, sovereign, collected, not ill. but instead I am increasingly nervous, in the studio of all places I am nervous, about validation, my "career", my work, where is it moving...how does it entangle with recent "events", maybe not at all, and likewise about the knowledge gaps, about the time not had to sit and be with words, to edify, to "learn" even as I am learning...even as I have created, carved out this wedge of time for myself. how quickly the cake melts. On the seemingly endless plane ride, the first of two this week so I am already mobilized in anticipation, not even trying to undo the jetlag—I thought about many things, subtleties, goals on which I can't seem to get a grasp, at least when I don't have some stationary container (ritual: shall I pick back up the morning pages?) and about love, what it is I really "want". 

Nature book

Painting that is art historical the way that The Nature Book (2023) is literary. Paintings of the trace, via 

Bridge to

Teribithia, I thought about like LOL amid the clearings of Barbizon, and now, mid-crossing—on the way, back again to the art store—it occurred to me, this being inside of a live temporal relationship is what I must reevaluate, I need not rush, I do, in fact, have time. The paintings I am working on now, chiefly in constructing (stretcher bar stage) is a herbst suite? for this herbstsemester, it is a semester's worth of work planned and realized in November so, in a way, two-thirds through, but that third third being the place of condensation, concentration, seems appropriate: a third way in for a subject of third space. so I don't have to run over the bridge in the rain, I can wait for my friend to bring me her roommate's cart, I can take care, be deliberate, slow down. turn around, eat lunch, start again later on.

Uhhhh

With every new painting I’m like wait did I make this painting already no it cannot be…it’s hard to say if it’s a memory, and a reminder, of inevitability in the work, of its issuance in parallel (1Q84 and the like), or in fact some external referent

Monday finds you

Picking back up, perhaps out of necessity, with a painting diary, the body a little broke from 24 hour travel window and walking my 2 plus meter stretcher bars over the bridge to the studio. 

Entered the morning with one set of compositional ideas, emerging by afternoon, briefly distraught at supply store, with another set, more resolute. 

Managed to take care of two tiny canvases from previous weeks, possibly even finished, so pleased about that. 

Having a larger room to myself for the next several I think will be an important crucible, already it’s a push to do it all, but some uncertainty arises always at key moments. 

Moving through those feelings of doubt or what next on my own, to simply be in production, relaxing into the great experiment, is also the so-called educational project.