I'm still painting, but in an unusual phase. Mostly, I'm working small, quietly, like water trickling from a stream. Eventually I expect the bits that I've done to end up as lakes, rivers, and oceans. Time will tell. I'm doing the little stuff because I can't seem to bring myself to do the big stuff.

If there's anything I've learned about creating so far, it's to keep going, keep doing, regardless of my feelings. If I keep the momentum going, it's much easier when the flow grows to keep going than to get started again.

So, my recent mantras are:

Work quickly
Use what you have already
keep the momentum going

I'll show you the results of these thoughts as they form visually.

This is a finished painting "Listening" which is hung over a sculpture my dad just finished for me title "Limu" (Hawaiian seaweed.) It's fitting that my father/harshest critic/fan/medici has stretched to a work of semi-abstraction and given it to me.


This is a new favorite I just started (mentioned in the previous post as delicious greys). I've titled it "Tales from the Alhambra" since I just finished reading the book and this underpainting and initial sketch seemed very Moorish.

Two of four paintings re-created out of a larger work that I vivisected and am now finishing with a breath of a sine wave in the overall design. This will be able to be hung in a long arrangement with some longer/narrower elements, or a square format with the same assymetries. I'll show you the possibilities when the foursome is complete.

Some more delicious greys from the previous week. I have since put in a haze of warm red. I don't know what this one is about yet or where it's going. It is rooted in fear: the barrage of outside voices opposing abstraction got focused onto this canvas. I did that same transmutation of feelings of aggravation at "life's little irritations" and ended up with my highest-paying painting yet. We'll see what this fear will turn into...

Jack and me napping: with some new layers of color washed onto it. I don't know what to do next with this one.