. . . took a week

to complete this small painting? And most of it was done yesterday afternoon. Last week I decided that since I wake up every morning at 5:00 a.m. anyway, I might as well "honor my art" as my friend and the fabulous artist and art coach Leslie Miller would say, and paint instead of reading the paper or doing the crossword puzzle or anything else for an hour. So I started this small study, an experiment for the bigger version, one very early morning last week. The problem was the drying time. Even with acrylic paint, and even creating two paintings at the same time, without sufficient drying time, I was wasting my time, turning everything to a muddy mess. Especially this painting, where I used really thick applications of both extra heavy gesso and paint. So I will just keep trying to integrate all the various pieces and bits of my life into one satisfying whole, where I manage to accomplish everything I need to do to keep body and soul together. And I guess if it takes a week to finish a painting, then it just does.