Diary of a Residency, Day 2, February 17, ’09

Day 2, Feb 17, 2009

Spent 9 –3 at the Red Barn Studio today. The sun was out when we started, but clouds blew in and glowered at me. The Barn was cold inside; it didn’t get any warmer as the day grew longer. I used a portable heater, but it only warmed the front of my ankles. By 3 I was wearing coat and gloves, chattering-teeth cold. I was very happy when Jer showed up. No cell phone service out there, so we’ll just have to schedule his arrivals. Not driving has serious disadvantages in this part of the country. No mass transit here.

I started one painting on canvas that I cut a hunk from. I had been putting things away, making my studio-nest, but realized that I was procrastinating, so I set up an Obo with 3 rocks, thinking I would do a still life. I moved it to the window (out of which is a very nice landscape) and liked the effect of the bit of branches that sit in a corner. Someone tried to bring this concrete square to life and at least in this corner, it worked. An “obo” is a kind of rock cairn, usually of odd numbers of rocks balanced on one another. The point of the cairn is not to indicate direction, as it is used elsewhere, but merely to say “I was here.” I used the obo motif in Basin, Montana, at my residency there, and found setting it up in this rackety empty space of a barn comforting.

The painting went very badly. The rocks looked like a turkey — I could have been John Currin, painting Thanksgiving. The landscape out the window was coming along. The branches had to be put aside until the end. I liked the grid of the cement blocks of the walls.

So I wiped off the rocks. In doing so, I managed to pull the landscape to the outside of the windows, in effect bringing it indoors. Which worked much better.

From the Red Barn Studio Window, about 27 x 24, (stretched) oil on canvas, 2009 [final version]

This piece is creased, so I taped it flat to the wall, after photographing it.

Tomorrow I think I’ll plan out a whole series of “windows” –these smallish sliding windows that are standard in the Studio  — and let the landscape slither across them. A long painting, horizontal: we’ll see what happens. [ed. note: What happened were a couple of very bad paintings that ultimately were destroyed]

I came home early, frozen from the bones out, and without any interest in returning today.

Reported from Beatty, Nevada, at the Goldwell House, operated by the Goldwell Open Air  Museum Residency

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