Here is what is going on now.......

I am still fiddling around with these journal pages! each move I make gets me more excited about where they are taking me!

You must have seen them in an earlier post adhered to a 3x4 foot panel .......... I have been working on the larger pieces while pondering what to do about this beast! And then it came to me one morning while I was still asleep...The weather had turned to freezing about a week ago. I recalled a painting of mine that had been left in the back of a car during a frozen january a few years ago. When I retrieved the painting from the car it had crack across the surface. I lifted the painting away from the panel and turned it around. It was like looking into a painting from the inside out. From the first marks made to the last. It was astonishingly beautiful and yet had been hidden by the paintings completion. This made me think of all the journal pages lost to the back side of the pages shown. So I put the 3x4 panel on the porch in the freezing cold, where I left it for several days. It did not crack as I had hoped but I did bring it back into the studio where I cracked off all the pages to reveal the foregone images. Now caked with resin I rolled a thin layer of gesso over some of the surfaces and began to think of a new way to show these pieces. I like holding them and turning the pages. They will no longer fit within the confines of the covers. So I built a house of cards.

And then these turned themselves red!

There is a bit more evidence of the journal pages in this group. The mark making, the exposure of some of the collaged imagery from the printed journal pages. It is difficult to transfer something which is beautiful small and have the same success with the same imagery in a large format. I need to have larger hands and tools for bigger mark making to achieve the same ratio. I'll keep trying.....These are not even that big!

The red in this work is actually a permanent marker, rich, rich, rich in hue, yet translucent! And stinky!

So here they are, heavy paper, printed versions of the journal pages completed obscured. Wax, plaster, encaustic gesso rolled over the paint. How do you like the format

The small yellows are on panels and the above pieces are on paper. That was the plan. Some of my struggle is with format, squares or rectangles, long or short, horizontal or vertical? The journal pages are 3.5x5 vertical, there is something about that narrow vertical shape. Two squares on top of each other also offers this ratio. Let's see

hellohellohellohellohello.....I think I like this one. In this size or maybe this size or maybe times, yes , this is much better.

Welcome yellow, so way not mellow! Below are some new pieces based on the journal experiments I have been messing with all term. First, my mentor, Jill Slosberg-Ackerman, loved those little books and wondered why my paintings were so disparate. She suggested I just work on the books for a bit, which I did. I disassembled one and created the 36x48 painting which is somewhere below...way down. Maybe that was a mistake, I don't really know. My next assignment was to scan and print out a few pages from the journal and use those as the basis for a new body. Which I did. What you see here is the continuing evolution of those pages. I am beginning to feel alright about them.

white paint stick

I wasn't really done ,so here i will continue......So, I said the part about the portrait, she said the struggle was the greatest in the face. How much do I let get covered? " Let go even more",she says. Am I preserving too much of the foundation? What do I do about Matthew Barney? The white brings unity between these images. Am I deeply philosophical about my process and intent? Do I make gratuitous marks in my abstraction or is there a convincing logic, Like Rauschenburg? She say's "use more of you as the glue".

Work on self portrait. why? I don't want to paint representationally. Where is the balance? Where am I? Eleven Oclock on sunday.

White paint stick!

these pieces are on paper. They are a combination of wax, oil paint, red perm marker, encaustic gesso and graphite. Oh, also they have below them the printed images from the journal, blown up. I have no idea where I am going......I feel like I am trying to move forward but am stepping backward in order to do so. I am just going to push it until it tells me to stop. Do and undo, do and undo.

It is definitely an excavation, a dig, only in reverse.

I had a conversation with Jill today (she is my mentor) I showed her a portrait I had done from life. The portrait is in walnut oil. I will post it when it is something that I like. It is very loose and gestural. Jill said that in the portrait, gesture is as important as the image being depicted. She continued to say that I was trying to speak two different languages at the same time. One of abstraction and one of representation. And that I should try to bring all that I do in abstraction into representation

Each year select artists are issued a room somewhere underground, inside the bunker. My installation was in the room at the far north end of the tunnel. The tunnel is 150 long so whatever is in that room has the potential to be seen from 150 feet away. I had many assistance on this install including my 3 year old grandaughter Tallulah, who helped collect pine needles and painted the walls. The walls of the room are cement covered with grafffiti. we used rollers to roll inconsistent vertical bands around the entire room and ceiling, leaving the graffiti between the bands to suggest the continuation of the forest. This would have been enough for me as the walls were akin to my work in the studio,(even more so satisfying than what I am doing it the studio now!) We foraged the island for fallen trees (of which there are thousands downed from severe storms of the past few years). All of the trees required 125 inches in length and a fairly rigid linear stature. We cut 20 total. Getting the measurements exact took time and a chain shaw. The bunker is dank and decrepid and basically crumbling with age so each tree had to be cut many times to allow for secure wedging upon erection. The sound of the chain saw inside the bunker was mesmerizing, Something about that I love....power tools as musical instruments, hmmmmmm. Our light came from 50 or so candles floating in jars which lined the room along the walls on the floor. The floor was covered with a lofty bed of orange pine needles. The sound inside the room was muffled echoes. Oh, and I looped a disc of Tuvian throat singers which played for the duration of the event. The effect was powerfully zen, calm, meditative. Spectators entered and stayed. planting themselves on the pine needles.

I will try to upload a few more good images of the install

There is an Art event every year around the harvest moon on Peaks Island called The Sacred and Profane.

It is an opportunity for artists to exercise their gifts outside of their studios. It is held at the same site each year, in an old underground military bunker called Battery Steele.

To update I have loaded a bunch of new images for your viewing pleasure. As you will see I have made some decisions regarding the journal work I have been focusing on thus far. I have forgone 50% of the work and adhered the pages of the journal down with resin and wax. I was thinking too much and it was becoming precious.

this is last night's sunset on Peaks Island! This is where I do most of my writing. I suppose it will not last much longer for lounging as winter creeps toward us.

I feel lucky to be here!

and then things that are going on in my studio.





Also, books I have acquired to ponder. I am currently reading The return of the Real by Hal Foster. This is a great book to help with my critical theory paper.




the next few images are of things I like to look at or photos I have taken with my phone of repaired cracks in the pavement. I find these images inspiring in their simplicity and mundane.

this is one journal waxed and arranged.

It measure 36x48. I thought I was going to work small but I cannot help it. Do I forgo 50% of the work?

these images are my most recent projects having to do with my journals. My menter has given me license to work solely on the books for a week or two. This has been spawning ideas by the millions for me as to where to head. Thinking too much probably.

These pages are white out, sharpies permanent markers in black and red....I love the smell of all of these materials. and the way the markers and whiteout respond and react to eachother. This work has been growing over the course of a couple of years. The books begin as lists that I keep . Grocery lists, lists of things to do, bank account passwords now obscured, poetry, lists of words, names for babies, titles for paintings and playlists for our band Adult Bunnie Suit, Lists of artists to look up, galleries to perhaps contact and direction from google maps , lists of things people say and ideas for everything. When the book gets overwhelming with lists I begin to obscure certain words with white out or marker, leaving an evidence, a new poem emerges from the words left visible. I am not thinking, just making, piling things up like I usually do.
It was great to talk with Aris yesterday and now that I have a new macbookpro I can blob more often.

so, My new project suggested by my mentor, which I am also so thrilled to explore is this...........Scan the pages and enlarge the single pages on heavy paper and use the surfaces as a beginning for single paintings. they are being printed as we speak! I cannot wait to see them large, I know the door will open.


I need more grace than I thought