Every Ending is a Beginning

Huzzah! My show has been delivered. Time to Start the next thing.

I am on a merry-go-round.

It never stops.

One more trip around the ring, while the ringmaster cracks the whip.

Each time you have a clean load of laundry, fresh from the dryer, …oh look…there are already more dirty socks in the laundry basket.

Making art is like that too. You schedule a show, usually a year or more in advance. You get out the calendar, how many pieces do you need? How much time can you spend on each one?

I know that I am fortunate to be able to pay my expenses from making art. I am fortunate, despite the ups and downs, the uncertain fate of my checking account, the budgeted trips to the grocery store.

Last week, I loaded up all my work from the last 10 months, and drove it into the city.

Out here, in the hinterlands, I can go days without leaving my house. I can drive to the town where my post office box and not-yoga class are, and drive 3 miles before I see another car. But I safely delivered 23 pieces of art. Five paintings, and 18 monotypes. Through city traffic, during road construction season, no less.

It’s a gamble in these times we find ourselves in, making beautiful things, hoping someone will feel moved enough to plunk down their cash or credit card, so they can live with this thing that sparks their interest, brings them joy, or, dare I say, gives them hope? I don’t know what I would do, how I would fill my days without this daily practice of making these things.

And so, begin again…

After photographing and framing all the work for my Fountainhead Gallery show, it was time to start new things. The benefit of having to photograph and catalog everything for the gallery a month and a half before the show opens, is that it gives me space to relax enough and rest and be eager to start something new.

I got a private commission for an egg tempera painting which is now in progress. Here it is so far, about 1/2 through the painting process:

The water will get a few more layers, the back is mostly done, and I’m starting in earnest on the column of stone on the left side of the painting.

I have a group of monotypes I am working on now. I started them before I was finished with work for the show, thinking they would be done, but that wasn’t what happened, and I had enough work for the show without them. I’m excited to share them with you soon. I’m trying to push outside my way of constructing paintings, with more spontaneous marks in the underneath layers, before I impose order on them.

I hope you liked having a look behind some of the layers of this painting. I’ll post it too, when I’ve finished. Thank you for checking in here, and letting me share a peek behind the studio door.

If you’re in the Seattle area, I hope you can make it to my show at Fountainhead Gallery, on W. McGraw Street in the Queen Anne Hill neighborhood. The show is up from July 3rd till August 3rd, with an artist reception (myself, and two other artists) on Saturday July 12 from 4-6 PM

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER
(sorry, sorry, I couldn’t help myself)