i've missed three days since the start of the year but i think i've already got more posts in 2009 than i did last year! yikes! i'm getting better about it and happy to have the challenge.
i am a bit ambivalent about writing so much about my day to day life, however: all the thoughts that flit through my head and all the non-art-related stuff. but i guess the life of an artist is about much more than just posting pictures of new work and going to shows and pointing out the work of other artists i'm attracted to. the hikes and jogs i take with my dog everyday are somehow a bigger influence on my practice sometimes than anything i've read or seen or critiqued. there's something to be said about really being involved with (and seeing) the environment you live in... the landscape and the community, who you spend your time with, the conversations you have, and all the little things that make a day.
today, after our hike, i took a few pictures of the vineyard we trek through everyday - a landscape that's starting to show up in my paintings. for the first time in my life i am painting trees and this is why:
the timber line has had a completely wonderful effect on my attitude and inside my work... it's leading me in a new direction, a direction i've never considered and never anticipated. i've never painted landscapes, never dealt in the picturesque, and i'm not really doing that in my work now so much as letting the land have an influence. i look out across the mustard blossoms in this wide open space and it's so quite out there that i can't help but feel lucky and clean and inspired to be better... to live better... to have a more intimate connection with the world and be thoughtful in every enterprise. even the NO TRESPASSING signs out here seem polite.
