Sorting Things Out

Let's see here... it's been almost 2 months since I've blogged and that is a long interval for me.
So, a lot has happened.

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Our main car broke down and was in the shop for almost a month, and so I pressed my old 1971 Datsun 240z into service, which sort of revived my love affair with that 49 year-old beauty. After the sensible family car came back from the mechanic I fixed the Datsun's speedometer, completely re-did the suspension and brakes, and then finally fixed the heater, making it a viable winter car. In fact, over the years I have fixed so many things on this car and really, the last major thing to do on it would be to paint it.... but... it's sort of perfect the way it is. It's like a 'stealth nice car,' a little sports car that is very nicely sorted out but looks like crap. Perfect for Taos.

I could write a whole blog post on my love for this car, but I think I would lose most of you along the way!

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Way back in November, Christina and Kodiak and I took a road trip to the Big Sur area of California for Thanksgiving. Wow, California has gotten expensive. But Big Sur is just as beautiful as ever. 

I used this trip to deliver Big Mother to the fellow in California who bought it. Woohoo, that's the third pice of art I've sold in my life! 

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And speaking of travel, I just got back from a 7-day meditation retreat in Crestone, Colorado, which is about a 2-hour drive from our home. Christina had attended this same retreat last year and had then done it again a few weeks ago, and she liked it very much so I gave it a shot. In the last year or so there have been some indications that I should perhaps take a good clear look at certain elements of myself and see if I could clear some things up, and a week of silence in the mountains seemed like a good place to try. The meditation aspect of the retreat (which is a really big part of it - sitting in silence for about 8 hours a day) did not really hit home for me, but ironically the experience turned out to be quite useful for me anyway because of a book I was reading and a conversation I had with a fellow retreat attendee which dovetailed nicely with the book. They say that one of the goals of a Buddhist meditation practice is to 'open up space' in your crowded head, to allow things to come up to the level of consciousness. Perhaps this did actually happen for me; perhaps the meditation served its purpose after all. In any case, completely checking out of your life, ditching your phone and laptop, and just sitting quietly for a week is bound to have benefits. I did find that I was drawing compulsively, which is something that I wish I did more of in daily life. The fucking internet is always getting in my way.

The thangkas in the meditation hall were spectacular. This is Ritrö Gonpö....

And this is Karakulla, protector of mothers, families, and children. 

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The last time I posted on this blog I wrote that I was feeling blocked about painting, specifically with regard to the topic of choosing subject matter to paint. Well after that blog post things opened up a bit for me. First I painted a small painting, the subject of which did mean something personal for me; in other words it was not strictly a technique exercise although of course it functioned in that way to a certain extent.

Then, I settled on an idea for my next painting which I'm really quite excited about. Being fairly large and incorporating multiple figures, it will be significantly more ambitious than anything I've painted yet. But then, for about a half-day, I again found myself feeling very frustrated and stuck because in order to start sketching for this painting I needed to take some photographs of some human models and that just seemed really daunting to arrange. But after a quick and helpful conversation with Christina I decided I would simply take photos of US, of her and me, and use artistic license and photoshop to tweak these images into what I needed them to be. What followed was about four or five days of drawing, as I made the preparatory sketch for the painting... which felt great. 

During this time I also prepared a 'canvas' to paint on. Actually I'm going to paint on hard board (masonite) as it has quite a few advantages over canvas. But this process of making my masonite 'canvas' was really a much bigger pain in the ass than I wish it was and this has everything to do with the fact that I don't have a proper place in which to paint. As I mentioned the masonite board is fairly large and I've needed to carry it back and forth between my crappy little studio (buried in the back of our home) and the metal shop, sometimes with wet paint on it, and that is a pain. So my determination to build a proper studio has increased dramatically. I'm currently weighing various options, ranging from a 'building within a building,' (or a separate structure within our existing shop) to building a free-standing studio from scratch to assembling a prefabricated 'shed'-type building, each of which comes with various advantages and disadvantages. 

So... just when I'd found a subject matter and finished a preparatory sketch that I was pretty inspired to get into, life conspired again to keep me from painting. An old friend from college called me out of the blue and hooked me up with a very well-paying mechanical design job, which threatens to keep me busy for a little while. Oh, sad irony! Well, it could be worse. The money from this job might just end up building my little painting studio, so I shouldn't complain. 

Meanwhile I continue to draw from live models every week... or almost every week. I think my drawings are actually getting better. 

This is my favorite one from the last few weeks.

Insert random image, unrelated to the balance of the blog post. 

(This is a poster that was wheat-pasted on the walls of a construction site in lower Manhattan when I visited a few months ago. When I saw it, I loved it. Man, I had to work hard to get that poster off the wall, cleaned, and transported back with me to Taos. But it was totally worth it.) 

and lastly... California, with my sweetie.

Ciao