And now, bye and bye I'd promised the photos of the
paintings, or Being and Nothingness.
(no kidding).
The pills I'm taking now, daily, are
Paintings:
Portrait with a red
brush
Leather couches
Woman in the bath
Marley, sleeping
Another night cafe
Portrait
Dining room
Rugby (open porch)
Portrait of me as
Gauguin
This is a good picture
for, and of me. Simple, honest, with a touch of red,
a pretty good indicator
of confidence.
Leather couches comes
from a visit by Dave Linne while I was painting in the front yard.
In comes Dave and Judy's
not happy with the furniture. We go to Lauers and buy $3,000
worth of couches. I love
these couches and the main couch in the picture is the couch I sit
on most of the time.
It's my Saturday afternoon nap couch.
Woman in the bath comes
from my imagination, and I did have to change the hair color from black to
blonde when Judy said, "Who's that?" It wasn't anybody so why not
change it?
Tough life this dog,
this Marley laid there on his step for four hours in the afternoon while
I worked on this
painting, never moved. Tough life, Marley.
I always go back to
Vincent, this one three or four times now. The pool player always
gives me trouble. One
once looked like a Mexican, (not that there's anything wrong with that) who
didn't fit into the South of France. This time, better, better still. Vincent,
I always go back to Vincent.
Every once and a while
I've the need to try and get serious, and make an effort like this one. I think
it shows confidence, growth, demonstrated knowledge of the craft, as it
captures a moment of me.
Judy makes beautiful
rooms that I get to paint, sometimes
the walls, sometimes
it's their portraits. This one's the latter.
I've painted this view
from off the back of Rugby standing on the second floor open-air porch. looking
towards the airport. This day was like October in May, cold sky, fall like. The
colors continue to be
bright, brighter than any previous effort. The work is more detailed and still
feels like home. This is the second effort of this view and there may be more.
It's a favorite place of mine.
As I was writing about what paintings I would eventually
photograph from the existing efforts, I was reading Gauguin's Intimate Journals
and thought to do a portrait of him. He is also very strong
still, and can easily transport his personality through time.
I ended up doing the following picture because I couldn't
get rid of it. Three times I'd painted over it with gesso, yet to begin, once
again, working up thin layers re-indicating dimensions.
The third time the surface had become solid and so I painted
on top of it, only to find the work absorbing into the canvas.
This has always been one of my goals, into not on to the
canvas. Anyways, this picture I worked on for several months and it describes,
as they all do, what I feel like by how I look, to my self. I’m pretty beat up
in this effort. Judy hates it, along with almost all my work, she said the other
day,
"I think VanGogh' s paintings are overrated".
These days I usually don't respond, that's one of those
discussions fraught with danger and little benefit once engaged.
Portrait of me
as Gauguin (10/4/98)
