November News

Well, I've spent the summer painting. Mostly big paintings on canvas but also 24x18" ones on paper. I really get into a groove once I get going. Functioning by 8am, 2 hours at my journal drinking coffee and counting my blessings (or untying the knots in my thinking), then breakfast and to work. That's the way it's supposed to go but I have a family and life intrudes.

However, I can usually paint every day unless Mercury's in retrograde in which case I think I've lost my touch and wonder why I try to do something so difficult when I dont have to. Why am I telling you this? Maybe because since you're here I think you are a person who grapples with self discipline as I do and that we all like to ask each other how we manage our creative lives. I'll be doing more of this as we go along.

We turned the clocks back this weekend and I noticed the persimmon tree is nearly bare now. In the summer the fruit trees looked big and lush, but now their small bones are revealed. There's some kind of metaphor in there but I'll leave it alone.

John is turning soil to plant garlic this week. I used to think gardens went to sleep when the freezing weather killed everything above ground. But no. Garlic will be planted and next month fava beans will go into the ground. So even as winter death lies all around us, beauty changed and laid to rest, the succession is already in motion for what comes next. Life is always starting anew.

I wont make this too long. I just wanted to check in. To say I am still here, still thinking of so many of you that I've walked beside and many that I haven't; to say that as long as I am here I'll probably want to talk to you. My life is pretty solitary by choice but when I am in your presence you have all of me. Because I do love people. As time passes that feeling of appreciation increases.

 

One more thing. I've decided to draw and collage in my journal again. For the last 3 years I've used it mostly to catalogue my paintings and "progress" whatever that is. But this weekend I worked in the journal like I used to and felt a burst of joy that told me this was one thing from my past that I shouldn't have put aside. So we'll see how it goes. Smaller works for awhile. More journal art. Sounds good to me.

xo