11:10am: here's the drawing i did yesterday. i've decided to use a white surface instead of the tinted ground. i'll post the first image once i start painting, in an hour or so. it's a stellar day and i plan on going to paint plein air at the creek this afternoon. mikela will help me carry my material & easel up to a spot i've had my eye on. it's a bit of a walk to lug everything, but should be worth it. stay tuned for images of the site & the painting tomorrow.
had a good talk with hockney earlier this morning. as always, he was tremendously inspiring and seems to be as vibrant and inventive as ever; perhaps even more than ever. he's working on a new book, "a history of pictures," which will be out late next year and preparing for an opening in nyc early november. we talked about ancient chinese art, for which we share a love. and henry geldzahler, whom we both miss. go to my story page to learn how i met henry and david.
11:44am i think i've figured out how to tell time with the void vo2 i received yesterday. it's a very cool design by david ericsson, but it takes a while to figure out what the hell time it is! the red hand goes with the red numbers on the dial, white with white. hours are inner circle, minutes outer. so on the image below, it shows 4:35. on my wrist, it's 11:53. it looks like it's showing 12, not 11, but you know it's not, or the hour indicator would be closer to the 1. chalk it up to wabi sabi. enough of this; back to best left unsaid 3.
by the way, i'm noticing an increase in site visits. who are you?
12:36: added 2 categories to my favorites page: watches and greek poet.
2:07: started the painting, below. remember the portrait linen i spoke of in my 9/10/14 post? well, this is it, and it's positively ORGASMIC to paint on!!
3:29: current state is below right, with a detail on 2nd row. scroll further down for earlier states & comments.
how this painting looks now, as i wind down for the day in my studio & prepare for plein air, is a good example of the "unfinished" aesthetic. so for me, increasingly and after over a decade of moving this aesthetic around in my awareness, i'm cool leaving it at ANY point in the process from now on, which is a pretty big shift in my understanding of "finished." your eyes & mind fill in the blanks, leaving you slightly off balance, but inexplicably satisfied. like having a small taste of an interesting dish.
