Music and Painting

In any other situation, the background of sound might be an irritant-but the voices of Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Willie McTell, and Fuzzy Wilson act as lubricant. Smoothing out the edges between those times when the brush is actually on the paper and when the action is stalled (when you just have to sit back and think), these voices help, ranging from dulling the frustration to accenting the high notes at the rare times when things are going right.
I'm beginning to think this painting thing is all about stamina: being able to paint and paint-maybe till your arm falls off-but things are actually improving. Guess this observation is a "duh" moment on my part, but I really never considered the fact that the "practice, practice, practice" idea could come into play here. I suppose this was true for me with three dimensional work, but that just seemed so easy for me-and it was easy there to "practice, practice, practice" as I (almost) always seemed to enjoy the results.
More stuff to give thanks for-where's Ian Drury now?

This one is called Driga-it's on a welded stand-as yu can see, it's made offa old log with a lotta help from nature-the hair is strips of cut roofing copper and he only has one ear.

Studio Show

It's almost time for the last few shows of the year: Baltimore (At the Visionary Art Museum) and my 2nd annual in-studio show. Trying to do a little more self-promotion this year and (fingers crossed) hoping that it might work.

Cleaning the studio has so far been a Herculean-type task. Maybe not quite as bad as cleaning out those Augean (sp?) stables, but, then again, I'm being no where near as thorough as I should be.

I also need to "get my ducks in a row" with the websites- http://wmskrips.blinkweb.com/ has seen no action for quite a while (you are looking at it before the update-more than half of those sculptures have been sold or redone!), even though I made mention in the introductory blurb of changing things once a week-HAH! Here you-all can feel free to call me a big fat liar! But now, I'm on the case and changes will be made so that I can skate by at least another year...

Let's face it, folks-I am trying to do too much. My painting has been suffering the past few months because of the short story I've been trying to put together, which has thoroughly zapped both my attention and my time...I'm not so sure that I even like the story anymore. I assure you that I could edit this thing until the cows come home. But I did find a parallel between the writing and the painting-I seem to start off quick, breaking from the gate like a old horse trying to win. But while I'm cruising along, racing to some kinda finish, I realize that the structure of the story-the plot-is not complete or satisfactory (read, trite). Why should I put out a story that makes a reader say "duh" after they've finished reading it? Things are a bit different for the painting-I get lost in the beauty of spreading all that paint and forget that the whole thing needs to have a structure-I wind up with all the interesting but discrete elements-I have thought about making cut-outs like Matisse-rearranging all my little beauties to form a monster collage-but it would make me feel so much better if I could paint my way to this, rather than resort to a sculptor's bag of tricks. Yikes.

This piece uses and old bucket-bottom as a background and the head is covered in what was part of a toy tea set-done in this color, leaving clues of its vintage. The eyes and lips are bits from the box of old traces I bought from a farm auction (the one that Steve missed).