Tank was refilled… to put it mildly

During my break from both the grind of the everyday, and from the joyful creation I find in painting, it was my hope to recharge and restore.

Looking back I’d say: done and done.

The flow state was maintained, in terms of ideas, vision, and refinement of the art I’m pursuing. I tried keeping a sketchbook which was a big mess because my handwriting is so bad and my selection of writing too made it worse.

However, l kept a draft of a version of this post open and filled it almost daily with the items my antenna picked up. Ninety percent of which were just noise and need much descrambling. That’s what will happen as I settle back. (And once I get past my upcoming scheduled MRI session and an biannual DMT infusion.)

A sample of my cryptic notes:

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1. Collecting the strongest riffs in my musical vocabulary into visual moments in oil.

2. The sound and base vibrations of ocean waves. Not white caps and seas foam green, but the eternal emotions conveyed. I sat there and it could have been 4,000 years ago or in the scene of a book, or moments before my own death.

3. My own terrible handwriting carved into wood (under or on top of color).

4. Four moments in life that have no words or horizontals of images that can express them. 1. First day of school. 2. 5 seconds before the first kiss. 3. Your own child’s unhappiness 4. Surrender to a power bigger than yourself.

5. The hidden joys that are everywhere

6. The movement of the Holy Spirit. (Wind and breath)

7. The stakes for free expression and therefore art if we continue to slouch towards communism. On canvas: The inverse of a shining city on a hill.

8. And the preservation of said freedom.

9. Baby sparrow being fed by dad.

10. GRAY. INWARD DEEPENING OF DARKER AND DARKER TOWARD A ROYAL MAGENTAS. Wiped endges begins nearly white the nested rectangles converge into a tall thin vortex where a luminous portal opens a fracture through the monochrome grays.

11. Sea grass sway v hard horizontals of sand.

12. Before Totus in orange. The perpendicular wiping o complex colors in bands.

13. . 2x four long for the laying under yellow totus

14. Names: Via Crucis, stations, imitations, mica, Ruthie, infused hope,

15. How to disappear completely. Black and dark purple envelopes a lower glowing light

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17. Vertical seascape turbulent sky and roiling sea below with unlikely palette: orange sky, purple clouds, yellow ochre and burnt senna make gray “ocean. “

18. Scraped totus over a perfect background. The Weathering is confined just to totus.

19. Weather the tree cut with totus carved in first then years of layering

    
    

I’ll be sifting through that for a while, but some..some are ready to rip.

And those will be in the studio soon.