Economic downturns

I've got no temp work. I've got very little free-lance work. But at least I've had time to paint...

Now I hope I can sell some, too.

Leonard Cohen

Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.

Do you ever feel like this?

No?

Maybe it is just me.

Where the mind roams

So. With a lot of my work up on a wall together this weekend I noticed that there are a couple of unexpected image themes running through my work. One was wings, the other? Octopi.

Goodness only know what that might mean.

And so...

Quetzlcoatl, again.

New Bedford Open Studios this weekend!

Whew

Back to art after
way too much of that
"you're doing it right"* life
is weird stuff

*PJ

Who I am Now

Working on a self portrait

Asking myself almost adolescent questions

Re orienting

6 months ago 7 months ago

The tide turned in my life

Something that I had counted on, someone. Changed.

As if -- with your foot, with your weight, firmly on a stone
the stone turns

And becomes what you didn't know it was
something alive, a turtle, a snake, a rabbit
it moves suddenly and unexpectedly
It can startle you, it can panic you and if you
have believed too strongly in your perception of what was
there as "solid" this discovery of it's truth as a living
moving, changeable thing, can make you doubt yourself.

Have I seen anything clearly? you wonder.
Do I have any fucking idea of what I am doing? you ask yourself

And *crash*
and darkness
and you wash up on shore
and everything is new
and changing
fast, fast, fast

I can't explain it, but something in me broke
Happy as I am
I have been unhappy too.

Trauma can do that to you. I know.
But the tide can turn again.

My own truth
in this new life, shorn of one very important companion
whose passing was sudden and unexpected and recent
but without his small furry self there is not a hole
no void left behind
but a stable arrangement of three
and a light in the trees.

I'm an artist, I can write whatever I want to.

I can draw it and make it true.