Category: Artistic Processes

  • Paintings, 2014

    2014 was not a good year for making art. We moved into a new house, with a studio space. A very large studio space, a separate building on the property. We packed (and looked for housing and sold our house) from January to July. We moved July 3 and spent July through November fixing the…

  • David Hockney at the de Young, Part 3

    David Hockney David Hockney working on The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven), Version 3, 2011 The Exhibit Design I mentioned the design of the Hockney exhibit earlier. I don’t know if Hockney was personally involved in the placement of the works although he has sometimes, as with the Royal Academy…

  • The Project from Hell

    The project from hell is the one that has at least 27 more steps to it than initially envisioned, and each step consists of 1 step forward followed fairly quickly by 1.9999 (or sometimes 4.999999) back. So, take 20 miles of a dry lake bed, Summer Lake, seen in September from a relatively inaccessible spot…

  • Playa: September 23 & 24, the last days

    Monday, Sept 23, last days…. A busy day in the compound. The full set of fall residents is to arrive next Sunday, so lots of staff members are here, working to make sure the cabins are ready and the Compound immaculate. I’m unaccustomed, even after this short period, to having so many people around (at…

  • Playa, September 20 & 21, 2013

    Saturday, September 20, 2013 I’m feeling that winding down sensation. The last weekend, then Monday, and then Jer arrives on Tuesday, we pack, and head out early on Wednesday, back to the land of trees and low hovering clouds. At Summer Lake it rained, stormed, stopped, and rained again. I snuck in a trip up…

  • Playa: September 19 & 20, 2013

    Thursday Sept 19 As I walked back from the Commons last night, I saw the moon rising in the east over the playa. It was not a huge moon like one sometimes sees but it illuminated the entire lake bed. More stunningly, it was golden, so bright that I didn’t need a flashlight. I was…

  • Playa Residency, September 18. 2013

    Wed Sept 19 Got up at 6 this morning, after rolling around in bed for half an hour or so.  I woke up in a kind of panic over my large, and seemingly impossible, project. My brain kept swirling about the problems of painting on the cedar (which really needs a lot of experimentation and…

  • Playa, September 17, 2013

    Sept 17, Tuesday I had an exciting morning. Went out with Rachel at 6:30 A.M. — this meant getting up at 5:30 because I’m a nervous nelly –  and I needed to heat up a cup of coffee so I could pretend to be human. We walked up to the bone yard, where Pepper looked…

  • Playa: September 15 & 16, 2013

    Sunday morning, Sept. 15 I am outside on the Commons deck, where the lawn and ponds and playa are quite beautiful and the laptop is almost readable in the sun. It’s only 11 AM but I’ve already worked on a large painting on-site up by cabin 1. Cabin 1 from the front. The back looks…

  • Paintings from Pine Creek: Issue 3

    18 x 24″, oil on Masonite, 2012 It was a long and fraught winter, with annoying bouts of vertigo that often stopped me completely. Earlier, I had committed to a charity auction, so most of my upright time was spent getting a small end table painted and presentable for the Community Warehouse Chair Affair. However,…