Hide all your yesterdays (and start again)

My studio has been a bit frenetic this past week, blotter papers filling the floor, brushes full of paint strewn about, water, oil, tubs of paint,powdered graphite, music music music, and a lot of looking, questioning and running up and down the studio stairs. I ordered my supplies like I told you I would, and in record time the Fed Ex man was blocking my door with large cardboard boxes, oh so exciting!

I have been exploring the Claybords in more detail, just messing around, and I don't mess around. This is different, if you read this blog regularly you know I don't sketch, doodle, or visually plan out my art. I may map out my strategy of attack but never the art itself and usually once a painting is started I plan on showing it. I don't have a lot of work around that I wouldn't feel comfortable showing in a gallery. Yes, I fall out of love with some pieces and some are stronger than others, but what I create usually leaves the studio. However, these panels are so foreign to me that I am really having to slow down and get to the know them.There is a lot of mediocre painting and more important learning going on currently. I get satisfactory results and then I take a steel scrubber and scrub it all away, and start again. I feel I still have plenty of time to get to know the material before I create anything permanent.

I love it. I love painting and tearing it apart, I love being able to take my time and revise. It is a long process getting to know a new material. Sort of a strange conversation, "Hello, oh you don't like that, but you kinda like this, but I don't like this... and so it goes." However, I have a fever to actualize this work. My paintings are not usually about struggle nor are they ever fevered. Yet in the past I wished they were- like the work of those mad passionate artists working in their studios as portrayed in Hollywood films. So, this new material is giving me that for now, but I suspect only for a little while, and then I will be able to manipulate and cajole it into something that fits the fire and noise concept. I don't usually have concepts either, so all the rules have changed. All of them! I am without footing and this is great too. Who knows if this will work, who knows if this will sell, who knows if they are staying true to the original idea. Again this is very exciting and freeing to think about for me.

So, today as I write this, there is a sloppy painting on the table waiting to be finished; more likely waiting to be found. There are two new paintings sitting propped up against the wall, that dare I say, rock!?! Another on the wall that is a maybe and another one already hanging in my living room because it too, is a keeper. Fire and Noise is spreading, not only through my paintings, studio, and house but through my life as well.

I just ordered all my old paintings to face the wall. I don't want them looking at me right now as they whisper, "Hey old friend remember me?" My reply, "Nope, sorry- not right now, I will again soon but just not now..."

I am hiding all my yesterdays...