. . . actually created art

The above picture is the first piece of art I've created in a while. . . and it felt good. It's 40 x 40" and based on one of my photographs. I have previously posted a 12 x 12" painting similar to this one, and I was requested to enlarge on that small one. I would say this painting has more random texture and markings than the other.






The above is just a small portion of the lower left corner of the painting.






At one point, when I was feeling like the biggest loser for having to resort to painting furniture, Martha Marshall (http://artistsjournal.wordpress.com/) tried to reassure me that I would probably learn a lot from painting furniture. Frog Tape is one of the things that I learned about. If you use painters' tape, I recommend this stuff. . . it absolutely does not bleed. One of the few products that actually delivers on its promises. A house painter tipped me off about it. It really worked on the furniture so I tried it on the canvas: perfect.

Sometime this week I will move my paint cans, select brushes, sanding equipment, etc. to the store. Zip has moved the painted furniture into it, and he called to tell me it really pops in the store. I'll take pictures, now that I have new batteries.

. . . googled great books

I have always considered myself to be fairly well-read, although mostly self-educated. Out of curiosity I googled "best novels of 20th Century." With chagrin, I found out that no matter what list I chose, I had only read between 35%-40% of what various organizations considered to be the top 100 or top 150 books. Some of the books I had to read in school, both college and high school; some of the books I had read on my own, deciding myself they were worthy of my attention. Some of the books I had read were just bad; some of the books I had bought but found totally incomprehensible. And some were undoubtedly deserving of inclusion of the list.

My favorite list is The 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century, Radcliffe Publishing Program Response (http://www.boulderbookstore.com/Radcliffe.html). Here's their list:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Ulysses by James Joyce
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
1984 by George Orwell
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Native Son by Richard Wright
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
The World According to Garp by John Irving
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Howards End by E.M. Forster
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Jazz by Toni Morrison
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Light in August by William Faulkner
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
White Noise by Don DeLillo
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
The Bostonians by Henry James
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

The ones I have read are italicized. . . only 39 out of 100. I was forced to read Ulysses in a class I took not too long ago, and although I recognize the brilliance and creativity of James Joyce, I can't think of anything that would make me read another one of his books. Too many puns, too many tricks, too many references to things I don't know about. I always like Fitzgerald, hated D. H. Lawrence. I went through streaks: read everything by Ayn Rand as a very young reader; everything by Vonnegut and Salinger. Never got into Rushdie, still haven't read anything written by him, or Updike, or Henry James, Henry Miller, Wharton or Forster. I don't know. . . maybe life is too short to spend time reading stuff because someone decided it was good even though I don't like it. I'm trying to decide whether to start on a self-improvement regimen and read all the books on this list.

I would like to add three books that have had the biggest impact on me and that do not appear on this list: (1) The Dollmaker, by Harriette Arnow; (2) The Women's Room, by Marilyn French; and (3) The Power of One, by Bryce Courtney. The Dollmaker made me cry; The Women's Room pissed me off and The Power of One was just plain wonderful. Do you have any favorites not included on the list?

. . . wanted to believe

What an historic day was yesterday? Both the 45th anniversary of MLK's "I have a dream" speech, one of the most powerful speeches ever, and the day that Obama accepts the nomination for President of the United States.

I will vote for Barack Obama. I agree with the Dems on most everything. I disagree with the GOP on most everything. I am a lifelong Democrat and never ever voted for a Republican in a national election. I have voted for Republicans in local and state elections, either because I knew them personally, or because, as was often the case in Kansas, there were no Dems running against the Republican candidate.

Early on, I was more for Sen. Clinton, mainly because I think it's about time a woman had a chance to run this country. But I wasn't opposed at all to Obama, and I was going to be happy no matter who won the nomination. Hillary Clinton gave a wonderful, powerful speech in favor of Obama; so did Bill Clinton, who seems to still be The Man to the Dems. And I really liked Al Gore's speech, too.

The whole convention reminded me of a pep rally. . . preaching to the choir. I want to believe that there is hope for this country. I want to believe that we can repair the US reputation globally; I want to believe that there is such a thing as capitalism tempered with responsibility; I want to believe that it is possible to revive the economy so that the gap between the rich and the rest of us shrinks instead of widens; I want to believe that the deaths of young people in a "war on terror" can end; I want to believe that the United States can negotiate instead of attack; I want to believe that we can come up with a solution to end our dependence on foreign oil without ruining the environment; I want to believe that government has no place in dictating reproductive rights of its citizens; I want to believe that this country can provide an education to every child that wants one; I want to believe that we can support the poorest of our citizens, most often women and children. And the list goes on.

I am fighting cynicism. I want to believe that regular people actually have a say in how the government is run. I want to believe that my vote might actually count. I want to believe that the people we elect to public office, on any level, no matter Democrat, Republican or Independent, actually want to represent to the best of their ability the interests of their constituency as opposed to their interest in getting re-elected. I want to believe that power doesn't corrupt.

As I said, I'm fighting cynicism. . .

. . . forgot about batteries

I really was going to take pictures and post art and/or furniture today, but my camera ran out of batteries. . . I know I have some around here somewhere. . . I try to keep a lot of them on hand because that camera positively eats them. . . but I can't find them. . . I know they'll turn up when I quit looking for them. So instead I will post another junkyard find.


Today is the day that my garage, basement and house will be emptied of all painted furniture. If there's something I don't have done, I will go to the store to finish it. Mainly I have to put some doors and handles back on some things, probably touch-up a few spots that get bumped in the move, just generally clean some other things up. I went to the store yesterday to check it out. . . walls are up where they're supposed to be and they've been painted with the coolest greenish-blue color, with a splash of lime green on one wall. Zip has accumulated an interesting mix of furniture in a lot of different styles. If my house didn't already have enough stuff in it, I would be looking for a place to put an oatmeal chair and ottoman; a faux-bamboo game table; two modern Eames type leather and metal chairs; a tiny little stool that has been weathered and aged to perfection; a couple of crusty old urns, one of which has a darling bird nest in it; a beautiful oval mirror; a kick-ass dining room table with 10 or 12 chairs. I think there will be a blog for the store, so I will post a link to it whenever it gets up and running. If you're in the area, it would be fun for you to come and check out the store when it's open.


I also finished my 40a x 40 piece. And I am anxious to start on the next. It's funny how just a little positive reinforcement (like sales, for instance) can get you going again. I was supposed to show my art in the store, too, but at the moment I really don't have any pieces available. . .

. . . cropped for color

and only for color. . . these are all of my favorite colors in one picture. The yellow ochre streaked with white and stained with brown; the reds and rusts; the aged blues; the soft greens. And of acourse, black. And not a circle (or at least not too many of them) to be found. I love the different lengths and widths and sizes of the lines in this photo, too.

I have the first layers of paint down on my 40 x 40 canvas. I think it will turn out to be an enlargement of a smaller one I have painted before. Is that allowed? So far it does incorporate many of the colors shown in the picture above. It looks pretty good now. . . I'm almost afraid to continue because I don't want to screw it up. But it just needs more. . . layers, layers, layers.

. . . neglected to clean

my brushes and other equipment, for a long long time.





I believe the pot of water in which my brushes were standing was the petri dish for many one-celled organisms that had colonized.





But what unexpected inspiration came out of the sludge. And now I have a bunch of clean brushes, too.





The picture above is a bit of a different matter. . . it's the hardened layers of gunk that I scraped off one of my trowels and another spreading tool.


Man, inspiration just hits you upside the head sometimes. . . especially if you're in the mood. And I am, I guess. . . yes, I did paint yesterday, and it wasn't furniture, either (don't tell anyone, but I'm pretty much done with the latest load I have on hand and the store is almost ready to be occupied.) I got started on a 40" x 40" and thank goodness it's going very very well. Pictures to come, I hope, of both furniture and painting.

. . . found picture perfection. . .

This picture is my idea of a perfect place to take photos. Unfortunately, the guy that ran the business was very suspicious of me. He thought I might be from "the city" and might be there to check for violations of something or other. Either I took this shot on the way over to ask his permission, or it is one of the shots he finally let me take. I'm going back there, soon, I hope; I will give him one of the pictures, matted and framed, of an item in his recycling center, to help assuage this fears that I am a spy from "the city" and maybe he'll let me explore some more.


And now for a bit of shameless self-promotion: I received a call this weekend from my "agent", the art guy that peddles my paintings. He had picked up 32 paintings last weekend; by Saturday he had sold 15 of them. He was giddy. . . he said he had never done that before, sold 15 paintings of one artist in a week. I told him to keep up the good work. . . I need a new floor. He needs more paintings. I still can't believe I am actually getting paid to do something I love and would do anyway.