Category: Notions & Ruminations

  • Another Direction: Day 23, Nov. 23, 2009

    Where do I start? One day is much like another, only different, and each day seems to bring new revelations. At least each does when I’m paying attention. This morning, I worked over that central panel, again. I realized that, as it was painted, it looked as if a gap existed between the mountains —…

  • Working the Center: Day 22, Nov 22, 2009

    A shortish day today. Lots of visitors, including old friends Fred and Betty, from last February, when they kept an eye on me from  Rhyolite, where they were caretakers. It was good to see them again; we spent a  couple hours just catching up. It was Fred and Betty with whom we traveled down Titus…

  • Sometimes a Great Notion: Day 21, Nov. 21, 2009

    This was a hard-working day at the Studio. I didn’t mean it to be — I just kept seeing  More To Be Done. I worked the center panels, particularly the central one, very hard today, using Liquin as if it were water. I also got to use my spatula-like tool, of which I’m very fond,…

  • Breakthrough: Nov. 19, 2009

    My day off  from the Red Barn and the  Big Honking Painting worked wonders. The middle three panels, 3, 4 & 5, were the least defined — in my head as well as by my hand. A couple of people dropped by today, which was quite pleasant. While John and his dog Dream sat and…

  • Desert Tour and the Long Slope: Day 14, Nov 14, 2009

    At 1 PM today, three hours before Jer was scheduled to pick me up, I decided I had chosen the wrong vocation. I would make a much better house painter than fine arts oil painter wannabee. I started the day OK. I hung the little masonite panels, which aren’t finished but which needed to be…

  • Trauma du jour, averted. Day 13, Nov 13, 2009

    Friday the 13th. Which I’ve always, contrariwise, maintained was a good luck day for me. And it was, as my lost Fed Ex package, for which I paid 4 times the actual cost to have two-day shipping and which I desperately needed to get on with painting, was found at the Beatty Merc, having been…

  • It’s Raining!: Day 12, Nov.12, 2009

    I didn’t know what the sound was, except that it was extremely strange. The Red Barn, with its tin roof and its kangaroo rat and its tarantula and occasional bird often harbors strange sounds. But this, well, this, this sounded like rain. Pitter patter rain, on a tin roof. And so it was. Earlier in…

  • Back to Work: Day 11, Nov. 11, 2009

    A friend suggested I might be a tad too obsessed with my painting project and not adequately admiring the desert as I did last time I was at the Amargosa. While I allowed that this couldn’t possibly be the case, I did take a longer walk in my territory today and found one of the…

  • Pigments, Placements and Papa Cezanne, Day 8, Nov. 8, 2009

    Last evening in a comment on Art and Perception, Birgit spoke about “pure” and “mixed” oil pigments. I was shocked! I know about “pure” dye powders and mixtures, and although when I was dyeing fabric I sometimes succumbed to the temptations of the mixtures, I was well aware that I was doing so. The problem…

  • Visitors: Day 7, Nov. 7, 2009

    More visitors today, all welcome. First I went for a long walk north of the Barn, delighting in the scenery, the foliage, the rocks, and the human artifacts. Then, after returning, and working a bit,  John Donahoe and his grayhound (whose name I keep forgetting) showed up for more advice about painting his screen door…