January kicked my ass (not necessarily a bad thing, mind you). Then it somehow slipped away, and now I’m a week into February, looking up and saying, “Oh, hell–is it the seventh already?”
I won’t bore you with the details, but the highlight of last month was spending a few days in San Francisco, roaming around and looking at neighborhoods I thought I might want to live in. And I did find the neighborhood, and now it’s just a matter of finding the house. (And yes, of course, there has to be some means of paying for it, but…oh, I’ll figure that out eventually. I have months yet.)
The Yes Project ended up derailed, not for lack of inspiration, but rather for the exact opposite. It started out as a silly project, with low expectations on my part, and then blew up into something far bigger than I ever could have imagined. All of a sudden, I had ideas flowing in for new images at an incredible rate. Most of them were far more challenging conceptually than anything I’d anticipated. I went around with my head buzzing with ideas; it was as if I’d touched some sort of creative live wire.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t compatible with making an image every single day. Maybe one a week; that could work. But in trying to keep up with the sudden torrent, I nearly drowned.
So now that I’m long since dried off, and have realized I’m still interested in the project, and still want to paint these pictures in my head, I’m still going to do it. It’s just going to be at a much slower pace. (I’m sure my vast readership–all three of you–will understand. [laughs])
But before I do any more painting, I absolutely have to get my studio cleaned up. Part of what hindered me in making images for the Yes Project was that I was fighting clutter left and right, never able to find anything, never having adequate space to work. The room that houses my studio is huge–13 x 27′–but in addition to being my studio it has also served as large-scale version of the kitchen junk drawer for the last five years. If I had something I didn’t know what to do with, I shoved it in the studio. Which worked just fine as long as I wasn’t making art, but right now? It sucks. It’s nearly impossible to move in there, much less paint.
The first problem I decided to take on was getting all the stray canvases, canvas panels, and sheets of paper off the floor and onto some sort of stand. But after checking out the prices for canvas racks, I decided I was better off making something myself. So that’s what I’ve been up to this week, turning some leftover Ikea ‘Ivar’ shelving into studio storage. It’s working out better than I had hoped–I’m already thinking about adding on to it–and I’ll have photos in the next few days.
In the meantime, I think the latest coat of paint must be dry, so I’m back to work…
