Weather Delay

There will be a two hour delay getting to the studio today due to icy conditions.

It's a good time to sit and have coffee, study Spanish, and listen to Ruben Raading.

Nueve, Diez, Once

Speaking of precarious architecture...

There are things happening here that are invisible to the jpeg eye. I have a hunch that the light spectrum that the pixel can capture is even less than film. Anyway, the paint is building up nicely on the canvas. This is the first painting that I haven't done on linen in a very long time. On linen the paint layers build up more evenly. I assume because of the eveness of the weave. Canvas, less predictable.

I worked on my little vestibule on the right under the wrong light source. I forgot to turn on the other lights I have on the setup. I realized this as I was cleaning brushes. Sometimes I am picky about that, sometimes not.

Trabajo trabajo...

Something To Distract You

My dear friend over at busyandbusy pointed me to wrongdistance for entertainments of the visual sort. We here at the studio thank him and owe him a nice telephone call, like people used to do.

This is all in an effort to distract you from the fact that I haven't been posting new working images of the current painting. It is because I am busyandbusy learning Spanish (Yo apprendi mucho!) in addition to the normal studio activities. I have pictures to post, don't get me wrong, with snide captions and such, but I just haven't gotten around to posting them. I am also starting work on writing a grant to make some Cowboys a la Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. I decided to start with scenes from the life Joachim as source material. There are six frescos. Just the right amount for a suite of Cowboys cowboying it up in a rocky landscape with precarious architecture!

Fair Weather Friend

This blog endorses the candidacy of Barak Obama.

I have had a hard time getting into the studio this week. Too much other stuff getting in the way. Christian Boltanski, in almost every interview I have ever encountered, has said that it is impossible for an artist to "live", or to be "alive" or something like that. You know, like art is too hard and serious for an artist to exist outside of. That has a kind of poetic/bohemian flourish to it. I am guilty of enjoying poetic flourishes. Bohemian flourishes especially. However, I don't entirely agree with that sentiment.

There has been some enjoyment recently. I went to see the Laptop Orchestra at the Kennedy Center's Japan: Culture + Hyperculture Festival. http://kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showEvent&event=XIJFJ#details I was even reunited with my old pal Voltron. Who, as you are hopefully aware, is defending the universe right now!

Heart

Did You Know?

Holy Crap! Where have I been?! I just found out about Salander O'Reily!http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B04EED81F3BF935A25752C0A96E9C8B63&scp=1&sq=salander%20o

In other news...

I went to the Phillips Collection preview of Degas to Diebenkorn. The photographs represented are spot on! Surprising Kertesz photo, and the Cartier-Bresson photo of Faulkner! Very cool, newer Bill Jensen and David Bates. The whole unrelenting modernist thing is about to be put on it's head there though. Stay tuned.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/02/08/ST2008020802436.html

Speaking of unrelenting Modernists, among other things, ecco Giorgio Morandi!

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={5D5AFA86-A086-4E14-A54B-E0FD91607074}