Studs, Cats, and The Smell of Turp!

So I opted for canvas seeing as this diptych is going to be an important piece for me. After dropping a decent amount of money on all the supplies, stretching, folding the corners nice and neat, and priming the canvas I was ready to nail away! But my plan was thwarted by some sort of mystery material in between my wall and my neighbor Patrick's wall.

I made an inquisitive hole and still could not see Patrick.

After greatly disturbing Patrick by searching for wooden beams in the wall I could only find one and decided to wait until my friend Nick showed up at a concert being held at my house. Nick majored in art with me at Skidmore and has been doing renovation work in a restaurant all winter so I knew he could help. Apparently every sixteen inches there is a stud in a wall. Good to know. Thanks Nick!
Finally, I hung the canvas.

Lily the cat ventured into her least familiar part of the house and proceeded to rub up against the edges of my watercolors. Needless to say she was ejected from the art studio.

I started the way I start all my paintings. Lots of turp and a few basic colors.

Here is an unfinished study for the oil painting done in watercolor, ink, and raw pigment.

And here is the beginning of something.

Poem 6/19/10

Waking at dawn each morning

Re-dreaming and still screaming

I sink into a bed of lavender

And its lightness confuses my senses

Fatigue becomes elusive

Floating above the surface

My heavy heart anchors me there

The senselessness opens the well

It all trickles down

I ask the oil, "why?"

A need to be necessary?

An affliction for affection?

Their frozen words circle

In the caverns echoing

Perhaps only we know how

You were more to me

And now

Remain a memory

Nothing

So the stand-off continues

But I won't stop it

If you don't haunt me

Spiders will

Negativity will manifest

Its ill will

In you or the next thing

Time will kill the fury

But until then I won't rest

Searching for answers

Which must be made

And making is the one

Action that may save

A soul from loneliness

For creation is the warmest feeling

The created are my closest friends

They are my tender children

Who will hold me 'til the end

Last Thoughts and New Project

I realized that last spring I did a landscape which also had a figure in it but the figure was very ambiguous and hardly recognizable. Here is a detail seen below:

Anyway for my next project there will not be a figure but there will be some architecture. I have decided to do a diptych of the two houses of solitude. However, due to my lack of free time and the fact that my last large painting took so long to finish I won't be doing too many preliminary studies. It will hopefully be a looser and quicker, more expressive painting and the two houses I hope will be fairly painterly and ambiguous.

What is to come...

I did one last portrait of myself with long hair before cutting it off. It turned out unintentionally very dark and strange as usual....

I would like to do more portraits but alas I lack a muse and have only myself to paint!

I was not sure what to do with two large pieces of sheet rock until just now. I wasn't even sure what my new project would be since I have many different ideas. But now I know... Update in a few days!

Fini

Poem 5/12/10

In autumn I walked
down this street
like it was a cloud
light on my feet
an ecstatic dream.
Now I glide
with peace and ease.
The sidewalk shimmers
its faded gleam
no longer blinds me
binds me inside.
I can see the houses
their fences and the trees.
I'm not a breath.
I can breathe.
Everything is green.

Where Solitude Stands

I had two important dreams involving Walden Pond. The first one occurred over a year ago when I was living in Paris and the second one just a couple of weeks ago. They had a strange connection other than Walden so I took it as a sign that I should spend some time there and paint.

The second and most recent dream which I had was extremely vivid. The entire dream took place at Walden on the side near the railroad tracks. The beach was closed but the whole pond path was crowded with people swimming along the edge of the pond. At a certain point I looked out at the water and tried to see it as Thoreau must have seen it and for a brief second I was able to do so. The water was shimmering and reflecting an orange light coming from the sky. It was beautiful. Then I looked up to see giant stadium lights shining down on the pond and to my horror realized that it wasn't even day time and everything was artificial.

In the first dream an important life ideal was highlighted. It is the idea of "being alone together" that is to say that two people would each be alone but....together. Side by side in their solitude. In this dream there was a specific suggestion to live in two houses in a field across the street from each other. I have only ever recreated this image three times as seen below but I have wanted to make a great painting of it ever since I had the dream.

Just after having this dream I read for the first time Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" and found a passage that pin-pointed the idea in my dream:

"the love that consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other."