I’m screwed. My backlog is out of hand; I can’t possibly keep up. The ideas keep coming. It’s not by my will. It seems like ‘something’ outside of me is making paintings and I’m merely the assistant. It surprises and worries me that the ‘something’ doesn’t care that many paintings do not get finished. I…
I spend a lot of time preparing canvases–stretching, priming, and grounding. The process works well for me but it’s time-consuming. I would gladly buy commercially-prepared canvas but my experience with it has been bad. In the past, I’ve paid premium prices for inferior products. The art supply market is filled with hucksters and amateurs. Knowing…
I became familiar with the Japanese author Haruki Murakami during my current fiction-gorging phase. How could I have been unfamiliar with such a gifted author? It’s not an excuse but I go through long periods during which I don’t read fiction. Murakami’s style is first-person intimate heightened with surrealism; all of it served very imaginatively.…
Rereading what I wrote about preparing a canvas, I realized that I didn’t emphasize the main goal enough. Yes, it’s important to protect the canvas, but the real goal is to make a great surface. The best surface is smooth. How smooth? If you’ve done lithography, then you know how wonderful litho stones are for…
My great-grandfather Ramey had a fierce personality. Even in his 90’s, he had no time for nonsense, epically from unruly children such as me. My grandmother ascribed her father’s fierceness to his harsh childhood. Orphaned early, his adopted family treated him as little more than a servant. One day, my grandmother’s oft-repeated story went, her…
On President Trumps’ last day in office, I’ve signed the petition that urges the president to pardon Assange. For more background, here’s a recent NY Times article. If you want to add you voice to the petition, Google pardonassangeNow.
Hobby Lobby, for those like me who hadn’t shopped there before, is a craft supermarket that also does a brisk business in frames and framing. They carry art supplies too–stretchers, acrylics, brushes, and oil paints. In Hobby Lobby’s case, they sell Winsor Newton paints along with their own brand, Master’s Touch. I have 2 tubes…
I’ve seen blood moons before, the red moon that appears during Fall evenings, but I’ve never seen a red moon in the morning until today. When I first saw the moon, it was so bright and fat, I thought it was the sun above Lake Erie. But it is the red-colored moon. I ran to…