I do think I have finally managed to crack the monster painting, after turning it sideways and having a revelation about the direction the background color needed to take. It still needs work, but I can now look at it without turning away in shame and despair. You don't get to see it till I'm done, though.
"What shall I do without you?", ink on paper, 2002Also, I am undergoing a shift of mood and consciousness, in a springlike direction.
"your eyes have their silence," ink on paper, 2002I actually started more of those little erotic drawings that Steve the Poet likes so much, which I stopped doing completely at the end of 2002. I am shocked by how rusty the new ones are, but encouraged by the fact that I'm in the mood to do them at all.
All those 'plans' I made for the paintings I was going to do this year, last year, don't seem to make any sense anymore. The fact is that I am a different person this year, and I'm not entirely sure who that person is. The fact is that last year, I was a walking scab. Even the paintings I did then, some of them, look like scabs.
This year, every day I wake up and think, "man, I'm waking up. What I mess I was last year." Still, most of the time, I'm not present or aware. But I'm more aware of how much I'm not aware, which is a start.
Yesterday, after the snowstorm melted (!) I wandered into Manhattan, knowing that I would most likely have a hell of a day today (four clients; could have been six, if there had been enough hours and enough stamina) and just Was. Went to the Strand and snagged the first two books of Neal Stephenson's "Baroque" trilogy, which I am seriously behind on reading, and Kenzaburo Oe's "Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age" which looks dark but gripping. It's been ten years since I last read Oe and I think it's about time. Then I went and tried to spend my Gap gift certificate (this season's clothes are impossibly bland, but they have finally gotten around to making jeans that fit my figure), had dinner at Dojo, and bopped around the East Village, looking for something to either take me out of myself or put me back in. Did not succeed as such, but the moon was out, and I clocked some mileage.
Was going to write a contemplative post about the love I have for my clients, but after four of them today I am too drained to do anything but surf and sleep. God bless.
3 comments:
That shame and despair stuff is gnarly. Little erotic drawings seem like just the antidote. *s*
I'm so done with the last paintings I'd planned in my current series except I haven't actually painted them yet, arghh. But several of them are really critical to the series as a whole; I'll just have to find it in myself, what's left of that feeling...*sigh*
I'm not generally a planner with this kind of stuff, but in this case the sketches and the concepts have already occurred and have a life and really want to be executed. I'll feel a little amputated if I don't see it through.
Whatever we'll miss with your "ones that got away", I'm glad you're turning a corner. I look forward to seeing Springtime Serena on canvas. Yay, life!
I hope that you don't mind but I have started reading through your blog from the beginning.You write so well.And I was so grateful that you gave me the other name .. inspirational.
Iris, I am honored. I read yours too, and I suspect that in many ways, we are the same person, separated by a generation and a country.
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