imbibe, inhale

untitled
Arches CP 300gsm, 6" x 9". 1 hour.

painting is lonely work, and sometimes My Morning Jacket or for philip guston on the stereo does not quite create the necessary ambience.

what intrigues me among the many "a painting a day" blogs are those that focus on the personal. the generic landscapes, bowls of fruit and studio portraits weary me. i'm stimulated by the artist's shoes, discarded necklace, tousled bedding, scraps of dinner, stack of unread magazines. if you won't show me your shoes, then show me your feet.

that is the lived life. we don't embrace the generic and mass production aspects of life, but the tiny and incidental and idiosyncratic things, the humble overused objects that wouldn't even sell on ebay. van gogh painted his bible, boots, pipe, potatoes and cramped little bed. he was here, and now he's gone.

i like the blogs that narrate the process of painting, of "being in the paint" as molly brose puts it. the blogs about "being out of the paint," procrastinating and posting old work and making excuses and nattering on about the people and politics of art, they are part of the process too but they are painful to go through. the pure marketing sites, "here's the painting here's the price", are neither here nor there.

i am still trying to find my legs in blogging. i always specify the paper finish, weight and format, and the time it took me to paint the thing, because i think that anchors the uniformly sized digital image as a physical object.

why do we paint? i haven't found an answer. you just "get in the paint".