You Know When You love So Much What You Are Doing That You Think You Are Going To Die....?

I had a really good day , an excellent day in my studio yesterday, it didnt start out that way though. The usual doubts and insecurities that we all face every day were in place, the problem with that is that when you make a painting those doubts and insecurities show up and are there forever in the painting..every bad choice and wishy-washy brushstroke is there, staring you in the face forever.

The painting above, based on Stereolab's Peng! album started out pretty awful, as a matter of fact it is a repainting of a canvas so lame that in the 6 months that it has been hanging around my studio no one has ever had anything positive to say about it, it never came off the wall for closer inspection.

I hate to waste a canvas so I scraped off the old paint, tightened up the composition a little and went back to work. I put the album on again and realized how formative this music was for me, all that was going on in my life when I got this CD.

I first heard Stereolab at Lollapalooza in '94, I went with my then boyfriend Bill, my then BFF Alex and some others. Alex and I smoked some pot and walked around a bit, then came across this incredible sound emanating from the second stage. We were totally mesmerized by Stereolab's sound and when the set was over we went back to our friends and told them about it..they told us about the Beastie Boys or whatever it was we missed.

I could go on about what an amazing time in my life this was for me...and it was! And it's impossible to convey all this in a canvas so instead I just put the music on and paint. And I realize that what is going in my life now is just as amazing as what was going on then. I'm not trying to make a record of the past, all I can really do in a painting is make a record of the present, the hour or so that I spend listening. Every brushstroke is a record of time passing and if I am not clearly focused in the present when I am making it, it shows.

The painting was going ok,  I thought I was done and I hung it up thought "well it's a little better than the previous one but still not that great". Then i got a few ideas and went back to it and with a few brushstrokes it went from an OK painting to something I can't stop looking at. I love this painting, right now I think it's the best thing I have ever made and it is , until I go back and make another one today.

The weird thing is, Alex dropped me as a friend a while ago, just completely cut me out of his life and I was devastated. I'm not really sure when this happened, maybe 8 or 10 years ago, but I was crushed when it happened. I've always had a hard time with abandonment, he still lives in the neighborhood and about once a year I catch sight of him, we just ignore each other and that's kind of sad for me. As I was walking home from the Gym yesterday Alex whizzed by me on his bike.