it has been raining all weekend. i have been worrying too much as a result and spent a bit of time crying and feeling pitiful. i am worried for more reasons than merely the rain.

we talked about moths and mortality and how they do not carry malt-o-meal in tennessee, only cream-of-wheat, and now there is a note on my refrigerator admonishing me to buy malt-o-meal the next time i go to the grocery store. i will put it in a box with some paper moth ornaments i made and ship it off to the Hog and Hominy State (or Volunteer State, if you are a purest). and i was given a passage from psalms for which i extended a passage of Simone Weil's Gravity & Grace... which was very much an act of mirroring. and emotional but very good. necessary... like a window. prayers floating in from the wide, wet world. bits of light, whiffs of home.

this is how i think of moths. i began printing some more after i got off the phone. there is a necessity in the image, in repeating it... like a favorite phrase of music: a hint of what ascension feels like.

hello beautiful!

i love the way mornings look and feel out here this time of year. it'll be hot hot hot in a couple hours but, right now, it is cool and bright and beautiful. the heat of summer is arriving and so my day gets rearranged a little bit. The Almighty Jog must be obeyed much earlier if i want to bring inga with me. jogging in a thick black coat isn't fun for her, i'm sure. so we're out the door and off to the vineyard by 8am at the latest these days. it's actually really wonderful to get it done so early. the vineyard is completely empty, totally silent except the for the birds waking up, and i am cured of worry right at the beginning of the day. that alone is a good reason to go run as early as i can.

worry is my biggest saboteur. it stalls me almost entirely when i give in to it and that's LAME. worry doesn't fix anything, it does not provide solutions or resolve or happiness or motivation. in fact, it saps me of those things and obscures my ability to see my own life and goals with clarity and intelligence. worry is a horrible bastard. one i've lived with my entire life.

at the beginning of the year, i decided to try to shake myself lose of its grip and The Almighty Jog (which has now accelerated in to a fun blown run) has been the best antidote i could've hoped for. not only does my body feel good, the work feels good, and the ideas i'm working with get clearer and clear, more and more focused, whittled down to something more cohesive and less chaotic. this is a very good thing since my major resolution for this year is to get an entire body of work together for a solo show. cohesion is extra important.

so today, after a bit more coffee and our morning run, i'll lug a canvas outside and use this beautiful light to my advantage. nothing beats natural light for oil painting. nothing. i can see every color and shade and nuance as it truly is. warm and cool, light and dark, nebulous greys and milky vs. transparent white. the gorgeousness of oil becomes so readily apparent, so beautifully obvious that i can work for hours and not run out of steam. it's wonderful. and if i just focus on that, allow myself to be absorbed in the pleasure and search of the work, all my worries abate- fall away in to tiny piles of nothing. and that's when i can feel myself moving forward. :)



"Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only saps today of its strength."
- A.J. Cronin


the point is to be present, open, and engaged. a hard thing for a lot of artists (and doesn't that seem weird?) but worth the effort. i'm at my best when i stop feeling pressure over The Future and all the things that are entirely out of my control. it's a hamster wheel of bullshit.

good morning!

calm...

while i was in the city last week, i had a really wonderful conversation with a person from my gallery. she was very attentive and patient and listened to me go on and on about the things i'm wrestling with- career blah, blah, blahs that, in the end, seemed a bit silly. she validated all my concerns but also let me know that i think a bit too much sometimes- a bad habit of mine that i had hoped gone unnoticed. ha! but it's good that it hasn't because hearing it from someone who cares about me, cares about my career, and cares about my general well-being really worked to relax me... put the brakes on my anxieties and bring me back down to earth. if this is my life's work, what's the rush? and she's right. 'nail on the head' right. and now that it's been a couple of days and i'm back to my normal schedule of painting and jogging, i feel clear and calm. the work has been and always will be the most important thing. i get ahead of myself sometimes... get all bent out of shape about things that, when it comes right down to it, are really just ego-strokers anyway. and i'm not in this for that reason. what matters most to me is that people have an honest, heart-felt experience with the work... even if it's a reactionary experience or one of disgust. almost any reaction is good so long as it isn't boredom. :) and that experience will happen as long as i am honest and heart-felt in the studio. my strange anxiety the other day about being too far from the city has been calmed. i'm lucky to live where i do- wide open fields to run through that are always in bloom... a different flower taking over each month... a place that's spread out enough to be LOUD at night and have it be alright... a place where all the stars come out and it's quiet enough to think and sing and get silly without feeling any embarrassment at all.

i need to send a thank you letter her way.