weather

uhhhh

How did the night go?

I was fairly cold this evening. Cold. Until pushed to express once again that my actions don't stem from some kind of hatred. I am told over and over again that my body language makes people who are close to me feel that I hate them when I don't show emotion. i mean, fuck.. I am severing limbs from arteries who never even saw a bruise, who always believed I would be as soft and generous as I was, without.... a trade. And here we are at the market on the darkest and most brilliant of days, as I approach the merchant with my wad of an exterior life's work just looking to unload it all and walk away with my freedom... and the wings fill with tears. That has always been difficult to deal with. Throughout my life, I generally don't convey or exude much emotion other than those slight or exaggerated expressions that are created and expressed to give someone else ease. I do appear to be hyper animated, because i AM hyper animated. I meant every last thought I ever shared, but this does not mean that you will like me tomorrow.

WWB

The original painting below was done and completed about 13 years ago. The alteration was done in the past 24 hours.

More than one monkey

My camera skills suck ass, so I have posted a light and dark version of the painting to help you make out details without the glare.

Also note the addition of other rocket ships as well as a flaming Earth.

SG commission... the monkey is back

SG commission... the monkey is gone.

SG commission

I enjoyed practically no sleep last night and then I went to the dentist. They injected me about 2000 times on the left side of my mouth. I went to the groecery store after that. An elderly man was sacking my groceries and he walked with me to my car. I tried to make small talk with him. He was hearing impaired and was trying to read my lips. My Sly Stallone half dead and hanging lips on the left side.... I must have repeated the word "pistol" to him 3000 times....

Here is what happened to the moneky/rocket/sweets commission last night. Alot of work is still needed. I am still not satisfied with the direction the monkey's facial expression is going. I just need to keep working on it.

Buyer, if you have any requests or issues with any elements of this piece, please feel free to speak up. I can likely only fit in another 10 hours on it at the most before delivering it.

Long time no seek.

So I am in Wichita right now with my daughter. She sat on Satan's lap at the mall yesterday.

I worked some on the monkey painting last night. See it below.




When I first went to Alaska, I left a shitload of artwork with my parents. I didn't really store it properly. It was in their garage and rats ate my stuff up. There were two paintings salvaged from this time period. I wish I had all of that artwork, but it was an important stage for me as far as the development of my style. I do have pictures of much of the work that was lost. Anyways, the two painting below are the only two that were spared from the rats.

They are larger than I remember them. "Whites Will Bleed" is 5 feet wide.
"Knife and Cuddle" is 5 feet tall.

Here they are.


"WHITES WILL BLEED"
















"KNIFE AND CUDDLE"

SG5

I made a couple of quick adjustments on this last night. Still has a long way to go. I don't like how much space the rocket is taking up, but we'll see how it works out. I am trying to have this finished for you by the time I leave next Thursday. I could always travel with it and work on it until I see you, but I am already traveling with a three year old and would prefer not to deal with it. Like I said, we'll see how it works out. I want you to be happy with the final product.

I was having a hard time making the monkey look happy, because I felt like he was going into space to die. But as someone pointed out, "Does the monkey know that?" I changed the monkey obviously. No details there yet. Also, you will notice... the planet cookie.

A sixteen year old girl in the UK contacted me through my gallery, and wanted to do kind of an interview. She was doing an essay for an art program and the theme was "wraps". She came upon an old crappy painting I did of russian nesting dolls. She thought she could work it into the theme. It was interesting to answer questions. I like interviews. Of course, I am not being stalked by people asking me the same questions and having my privacy totally shredded. Not likely I will ever let that happen.

I have been reading poetry too, and getting ready to leave.

Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell poems

GC1107 Stages 3 & 4

okay. Let's see what is going on now with this piece. It's initial stage was posted a couple days back. Monkey, Weird looking lady. Then I made some changes to it tonight, which you can see. I tried to incorporate the "lady" a little, and even though she was a freak I could have worked with, I opted to lose her which you see in this second image.
So now, we have our monkey in the rocket ship, and the lady is gone forever. She is never coming back. That was it, her five seconds of fame... anyways, I was thinking that it would be cool to add some monkeys in the background dropping from parachutes, only the parachutes were cupcakes. There's work yet to be done on this one for sure. Thought you might want to see, buyer.

I was reading some things by Amy Lowell tonight. And, let's see what else did I do? Oh yeah.. I keep getting into these arguments with these born again vampires in an Anchorage newspaper. Been listening to Baroness, Sunn O))), Tortoise, and a bunch of weird shit I downloaded out of curiosity, and most of it blows. I watched some of When Worlds Collide the other night. Humans in on a lottery for who will be saved and sent into space when other planets fly into Earth's atmosphere and destroy it. Sometimes the older movies have great dialogues and sometimes they are better enjoyed muted. This one jumped back and forth for me, but I always enjoy sci-fi props from the past. No doubt our future will laugh at our present.

Fucking Mondays.

Madonna stage 3 -5X5 & GC Stage 2- 2.5' X 2.5'

I took a photo of these two pieces I worked on tonight, side by side... Obviously.
I am not tired yet.

Madonna stage 3 -5X5 acrylic on canvas

I warned you about this, buyer.

This piece started off with a big fucked up bang. I just want to remind you that it will change alot before I am finished with it. You can change it with me. Don't get too attached to any of it though. If you do become attached to something specific about it, and want me to leave that element in the piece. Please, by all means tell me. I will do my best to honor your request. If I have a problem with execution... I will likely have to scrap it though.


I honestly have no idea where this piece is going. I will know more when I work on it and think on it some more.

2.5 X 2.5

I am notorious around here, for breaking into people's houses or I will trick them so I can take a painting back and change something in it. I tell people, if you don't want me to steal my shit back to work on it, then you better remove it from my scrutinizing eye if I come visit. Because I will take that shit, especially if I gave it to you and it wasn't a sale.


I'll give it back though, with the exception of ONE to date that I refuse to return it is so fucking bad.

Madonna stage 2 -5X5 acrylic on canvas

Madonna and other things.

This is a 5'X5' madonna that I started over the weekend. First layer. Acrylic on canvas.

I have been commissioned to do two more pieces. One is a smaller more whimsical piece incorporating some interesting things like apes, moses, cakes, ballerinas and rocket ships. The second piece I have been commissioned to do will be a mammoth in size. The buyer wants the largest canvas I can feasibly work on. I won't be able to start it until I have the supplies. Maybe 7x18 feet. And its a dismal sort of work, but energetic. I look forward to starting on it. I haven't posted anything for the first commissioned piece yet, because I don't want the buyer to be freaked out by the first stage. I will post it later.

Not too much else to say here. Life is fucked up. We have gotten alot of snowfall here on the island.

Tuesday's been Obliterated. I am not just one day.

I remember riding my bike, as a little girl down a shadowy lane. I remember riding my bike because I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to hear my stepfather talk to my mother. He worked all day in downtown Houston at some computer place and would come home and expect dinner. One of those deals. I didn't want to look at my mother's face when she looked at me. She looked at me with love, but there was something else in her face. Something sad. When you're a child, you don't think people are sad because of their environment. You think people are just sad. Kind of like how people are just clowns or people are just policemen or ballerinas or teachers.

Maybe as a child you lived in a house that had no tools to protect you from the grief of life. You were knocked around. Meals weren't regular. You pushed the chair over to the cabinet and you ate raw noodles from the macaroni and cheese box, because no one gave a fuck about what a toddler needed beyond candy to keep them out of your face. Maybe you lived that life.

Maybe you experienced sex for the first time when you were 8 because the people around you were so unhappy that they would have drunken one night stands on your mother's couch, without giving a single thought to the fact that you were watching your mother be molested by something so ugly.. so impersonal.. and even as a child, you never called her name to reel her in... you just watched and felt bad and hated the mess of flesh on top of her.. and wanted her to be happy and not scream at you when you pushed the chair up to the cabinet to help yourself... while everyone else took more than their share.

I never wondered what she wanted out of life. You don't tend to wonder what your mother needs when you are so young.

My mother used to grow a garden in front of our Texas trailer home. It was a double wide mobile home, and I don't think that my stepfather thought there was anything more to be had out of life. His mother and father lived on the next acre and he must have been a secure dude. All that stress of punching keys for interesting people that my mother and I could only brush against by chance as we cashed in shitty fucking coupons at a shitty ass country store that treated us like foreigners years after we had spent every dollar we had. My mother would buy one Little Debbie snack pack to last a month. So fuck you.

But my mother used to grow a garden in the front of the house, while I would raise rabbits in the back. She grew elephant ears. And when they were abundant, she took her wares to the roadside, as if someone wasted from the roadhouse 1/2 a mile away, would stop and pay 5 bucks for a bulb. But they were huge. And flying squirrels and tiny frog legions appreciated them.

In the back of the house.. I tended to decapitated baby rabbits. Babies, whose crazy black mother had chomped them to pieces in her neurotic insanity to keep the rest alive... So I tell myself. I was 9. I removed their headless bodies. I tried to talk to the mother. Ask her why. But she scared me. She hated her life.

Why do I love elephants? There's a lot of reasons.

Why do I love the man I love now?

I don't want to grow a garden alone. I don't want to be that child staring at meaningless sex on the couch. I don't want to remove bodies from cages. I don't want to suffer if dinner isn't ready on time. I don't want to be everything that has damaged me. I want to be my own future, and for once, I see it clearly. Fuck you if you don't accept it, I'm not using your shit coupons today, and I sure as fuck ain't shopping at your establishment for things I need anyway. What you have to offer is more of the same.. that I have seen.. from planet earth in general and her stores... so thanks, but I'll fight for my love instead of settle again.

Word to MY mother.

Darkest birds take me home.

I listen to the sounds of my house.

I hear the clock, whose hands I have yet to change, knocking seconds off of my life and it doesn't care. Doesn't care about me at all. If time cared about me, I would be hunted and dead already for how I have wasted years.

I am careful to choose my words now. I don't like it that way.

I prefer to unroll my tongue like a burning ribbon.

I tolerate my censorship. I throw up my own walls. I am digging into my own for this newest haul.

I feel like Poe.

And I crawl.

Not cornered.

Oktober file layer I

paint

I don't know what to say here, except that I should be putting a ground layer on some canvas. Most of my canvas is already primed with painting efforts, some with figures and concepts already complete, but the work itself is lacking and so I don't care too much for it.

I have a room in my house where it's wall to wall paintings. Older stuff that's okay really, just not anything that ever sold or really... that I have any amount of affection for.

How do I become affectionate toward a painting I have done? That's a tough question. I have done things that tooke me half an hour to complete that I would never touch again, because in some way it is technically a point I need to remember or duplicate. So, I like it maybe in the sense that it is a marker for me. These paintings tend to be ones that people comment on liking, and I am pleased that they have found something I created that they like... but truly, those pieces are just reference material, and pretty much bug me because i have no passion invested in them.

How do I find myself passionate about a painting I am working on? This is more complicated.. maybe it's not. I don't know.
The pieces I have that I am defensive about. Not necessarily if someone criticizes them, because criticism doesn't bother me. It amuses me. But, back to the point, where does my affection grow for something I have made? Typically it doesn't start with something clear cut like the sort mentioned above. It starts as a mess. It offends me in it's juvenile ability. I hate to see the canvas through the paint. I hate to see the brush strokes in the paint. I hate for myself to make figures that make me look mentally challenged especially if they don't even have enough going on to make you feel anything. Even the colors are rushed and uninspired. That's how my shit starts.

Then, in my anger and frustration I will continue to add things. How long does this anger last? The pieces I have done (a handful over my years) that I am passionate about, usually have me angry and frustrated for no less than a few months. This is a problem because months is an eternity when your frustration creatively bleeds over into a world of non-artists. Not to go against my theory that everyone is an artist.. I'm just saying that on this island.. I'm not having coffee with anyone who understands.

I intended to write something poetic.. but I am beating myself up about putting off starting a piece tonight. I am torn on concepts. I know I should just go use all of my black on one half of some canvas and dump all of my colors on the other... But paint is expensive. I really should be using sand, but I know it will smell like seaweed.

What will I paint? dancers in a cage? an explosion off a pier as two people embrace? a monster child at at tea party? a dark shoreline? a piano? a broken blade of grass? a tuft of hair on a tree? a lonely boy in prison? a man crushed by books? a garden crushed by a truck from a tornado? a manatee? a stingray? a wood plank with a rusty nail.

Last Night I dreamt....

8 Stories tall.
This tower is 8 stories tall.
I know that, because I created it floor by floor as I ran from the 8th floor down, in flight.
The man chasing me from the top floor wants to destroy me.
He was sleeping at first.
And I told him nothing.
He heard me outside the room.
He flung his legs out of bed. He stood up and seeing me through the wall outside of his room, he took a breath in and he grew to where his lower lumbar was flush against the ceiling. He brought plaster with him as he navigated the efficiency to fly open the door. Roaring, I heard him coming, could somehow see him through the walls, and I bolted. Flinging my things down the stairwell beneath me.
The electricity flashes off and on, and I catch my arms, ribs, knees and head on the wet mortar walls and the rocky pathway trying to see, tripping on moss, slipping on decayed earth.
I hear the beating of wings, only I know it's his eyes.
I think I must be at least 3 floors ahead of him.
My heart breaks for him but I cannot allow him to catch me.
When I crash into the exit
The sun has gone and I run through the wet grass, dodging moonlight, heading for trees and then I hear screaming. Constant screaming.

For dinner every night I eat.

Steamed Cauliflower Florets

Mashed Russet Potatoes (Peeled)

White Flour Pasta



And an Atomic bomb of BLACK PEPPER that I never actually employ.

One project ends.

I know that the quality of these photos suck. Maybe the buyer would be kind to have nice pictures of them taken once mounted in his office?

Finally finished. Packaged and ready to go.

1-25-2004 "Every Horizon is 97% Fog"

Every horizon is 97 percent fog.
silent and tired, lit far out there, cutting through a menacing message from the gods.
indestructible having beaten the odds and dominated violent wills.

I looked out the window towards the graveyard and half of my vision was obscured by a large sheet of snow curling under the eaves facing me, through it's thinnest edges it was ice blue. ragged like the upper maw of some wild thing.

I couldn't hear it as if outside under it, but somehow the imagery was something sort of immaculate in nature, so when I bore witness to it bearing down on me, entrenched in my limited sensory war zone, it's effect on me was.... poetic. And I hate to use that word. It makes you think you have a grip on my perversions when I use basics.

Resounded like a sheet of icy snow, curling and three feet thick sliding easily off of your lips with a recorder lying prone under your tongue, received directly in my head, catching every atom racing over your chin with chapters of worlds beating alongside it in seconds ... a translucent river of accomplice to stroke with.... pressing up against the pane reconciling it''s differences with dirt.

slipping further down, with a roar of friction, and landing, haunted and resolute below the sill, illuminated by my encased shadow.

on the side of the wall where no one walks the talk.

Old journal entries. "How does a bull sneak up on you?"

Someone reminded me recently of a live journal I used to keep almost 4 years ago. I haven't looked at it since then. In fact, I didn't even remember my user name.

I may cut and paste some of my entries into this blog. I will date them though.

This one below is one I liked.



The golden hour...

"How does a bull sneak up on you and shove it's horns through your back?"

Raised that bull since it was a baby. Bottle-fed and nursed it into it's nubs. Complimented it's entry into adulthood and waxed his horns. Marvelled at nature while watching it eat the green grass found, slain and relocated for him.

trained for the stage since she was five. She underwent the knife awake with the lights off under religous eyes. Her milk shook around warmed by the fire under her ribcage, her ass smiled over her head and she was always there to cut to ribbons the red flags clutched in determined fists, even when her day found her inside out in the trashcan under more trash.

ring ring.
ring ring
ring

"hello."

"hello."

"what's going on?"

"nothing."

clicks and buzzes enhance the experience of describing whats outside the window. nothing enhances the experience of trying to describe what's inside.

Alive.... Ask me when the horns are in my back again and milk is gushing through my chest, and you can see the veins in my heart at the bottom of a glass, with your beacon of light and your xray specs slapping fat fingers down like a fag on the new tongue and feeling light headed... because you have an opinion.

learn a new language.

triptychs.

Go here to see large view.

TT2 Terror

After speaking with the buyer, I made some changes.

Please help.

I need a new assignment. I don't care how big.

Triptychs 7?

OKay, so there's an internet technician on the island right now. I made him a burrito. But the important thing is that I can post the triptych progress I went on and on about in the previous post. Don't even bother reading it. It's all skim milk.

The first three are from one series and the second three are from the other. Still not finished, but getting closer. Copies are larger for inspection.. Sorry about the glare at the bases. Working on that.




THE POSSESSION





THE ARMOR





THE WOMAN DRESSED





THE AMBUSH




THE EXPOSURE




THE MAGNETIC FORCES


Hopefully this will post.

Etcetera with no art.

Here are the Triptychs photographed individually, and unfinished STILL.

Three of them are very bold and the other three are more tame. Since seeing photos of the office space where they will hang, I have been trying to avoid excessive use of the same hue that the wall is painted. From what I could tell, the wall is like a bright mustard color. Could be wrong about that. Okay, maybe the wall is French's mustard versus a Grey Poupon mustard. Whatever.

If you scroll down this blog, you will see the beginning stages of this effort. I don't think I posted the stage where I had made three dark aged individuals with blue feathers as some of their features. I really didn't like that stage, as it was taking me to a place I wasn't comfortable to be. I wasn't comfortable with the symbolism. I wasn't comfortable with the literal imagery. I wasn't comfortable with what the images might mean to me, and I wasn't comfortable pursuing all of those thoughts when the final product is ultimately a commissioned group of pieces for someone's business, even if that person is a dear friend.

I am not entirely satisfied with the results I have been getting with these pieces yet. I am stretched pretty thin with the amount of time and energy I have to put into them. I know that if I do not trudge along, that I will never get what I want out of them. Sometimes I get what I want from a painting with the a very simple approach. I felt like if I went at these paintings with that attitude that I would be cheating the buyer. It may end up that I have cheated the buyer by my convoluted evolutionarily devolved execution of an excessive lack of focus. I will work and rework the paintings until I start to have feelings for them. Sometimes this can take a shitload of time and an assload of paint and a shameful amount of staring at ugly.

I am only going into this long winded description of the process because my internet sucks and I am waiting for the images to upload to a photo hosting site. Normally I would just dump them in your lap and say, "there."

What I did salvage from the bird fiasco.. (or over self involvement) was the third panel in the TT2 triptych series. It is half a woman in a large dress, and her face has been shot over the page with alot of splash technique. Meaning, I couldn't bear looking into her ONE eye and so I destroyed it, with pretty much the emotion I felt coming from it. Details, I guess. Intentions too.

In the same Triptych series is the second (b) panel titled "armor". You might find it interesting to note, that I don't like this character. Maybe that's why his head is the color of a dogs erect dick. None of these "characters" necessarily represent people I intend to portray. With my stuff, one figure can take on the disorders of many, and so also, suffer the brunt of my distaste.. even though I created it, and some would say that I am somehow that thing myself. Whatever. When I die, you can say that kind of shit and people will be amazed at how well the critic figured me out. And that critic will die too.

Fuck these pictures are taking forever to upload.

The three panels that have the least detail have a long way to go. I am not totally unsatisfied with them, but I do want to knock them around some more. Maybe they will come out to me. I liked the idea of doing half of each of them in monochrome, but decided that monochrome will come from me, when it should, and not in a forced process like this... and likely not in acrylic either. Who can say how monochrome will come from me and when? I can't. Even if it's how I really feel. Monochrome stabilizes my emotions, and the wildly horrific color grafting I do with these types of painting are almost like a purge of everything that makes me insane. Just a theory. I'm sure I could argue the opposite. It's hard to really pin down how I feel about monochrome works. I have only recently been actually thinking on it. If I could do a self portrait, would I do it in monochrome. I think I would. And that answer is what has had me chasing my tail on the issue. I'm a pretty expressive person really, but I don't think that's how I feel the most comfortable. I am the most comfortable when I can just be, I guess. And "just being" doesn't want to involve the crazy conflicts and explosive color that I force from myself to cooperate with planet Earth literally and figuratively. I want peace, and I see peace and acceptance nowhere near my art. By acceptance I don't mean recognition and approval. By acceptance I mean... I accept this life.

Jesus christ this upload is dragging on. Maybe I'll just use blogger.

I think I will need to post the paintings when my internet isn't like christianity dragging me to the light.

Triptych Series order. Stage 5.5 and 6 of #II

Imposter!

Sometimes hunger is thirst in disguise.

Triptych Bind 1

I am finished for today. I do have to work and all... It's not always playing in the garden, this life. I am not finished with these pieces, and will return to mutilate the emotionless parts.

Working the Cat's Paw.

This is the point in my painting, where I have to be very careful. I know how I feel about these pieces individually and together. Getting my feelings across is not the hard part. Not destroying my feelings is the hard part.
And I want the viewer to get whatever they get out of it. If they get nothing. Okay. If they get more than I intended, that's okay. But I still have to give them something from me. Something that only I can give. I have to be careful not to make anything predictable. I want the viewer to own this painting with me. I want them to see new things in it every day, and for years to come. If they want to turn the pieces upside down or mix the triptychs.. I'm prepared for that too. And that is the challenge here. To truly give.

Maybe a couple more stages to go if I can keep my control and my vision in tact.






This is a cradle I found under the house I have been helping to renovate. Is it creepy?

What's going on.

I'm pretty tired I guess. I'm burning both ends. I'm not eating very much. I have no pride in my job because the recent management overhaul blows. I finished the memorial painting of PJ the dog for a friend. I worked on the triptychs some last night. Have at least another round to go before I would feel okay about sending them out of here.
Have been doing alot of work on the property we purchased. I will take some pictures (maybe tonight as I rip up floors) and share.

Are there animals who have internal organs on the outside so to speak? Like creatures who function inside out? Because that's how I feel.

Below is a picture of our superstore on the island.