Back in the Swing of Things

Holy crap kids, I just had the hardest time getting back into it after this amazing break. A helluva lot happened. First I went to visit Maddi, met her roomates who were so much fun that we all went to bar on a Monday night, watched the amazingness that was the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (I mostly only watch old movies to laugh at them), came back to DeKalb, ate mashed potatoes in a house full of cats, watched The Last Emperor (which we did not realize was 3 hours long!) with the rents, and went to see Maddi's dad in his glorious role as early '80's Chicago punker at the screening of the documentary "You Weren't There: Chicago Punk 1977-1984". Enjoy assailment of ears here:



It was both awkward and amazing.

Anyway, I came back Sunday and was all "Oh hell yeah, I'm going to work my ass off and get all this shit done!" Then I went to my studio. I looked at my painting. I looked at it and I loathed
it. I wanted to trash it. I wanted to never look at it again and start fresh and hope for the best with that. So I didn't work on it. It hung over my desk in my studio as a very literal symbol of how much I sucked. Then I had to write a rough draft for my rhet class for Monday and my second short story for narrative writing for Wednesday, so I did nothing with it. I kept putting it off and off and off until today, when I realized that if I didn't do anything soon that I was going to have to present it at crit like that. That left me cold but it got my ass in line. I went in today and mixed colors and suddenly, after 20 minutes of work, I didn't hate it anymore! See kids, I should have trusted myself more. The studio class has made me lose so much confidence in my painting ability that I forgot that I do, in fact, know how to paint. I've been doing it for years. Just not specifically in this way. Anyway, here's what it looks like now that I've integrated that giant white spot in:



Sorry it's so blurry. Here's a detail where you can actually see what the damn thing looks like:


I think it breaks it up beautifully. There's still work to be done, obviously. The bottom needs some work. But I can see the end in sight, and it put me in the best mood I've been in since Maddi, her roommates, and I all broke into a Spice Girls song on the way back to their dorm at three in the morning last week. I was seriously giddy. Ask Kelly and Christine.

I also worked on Galapagos Islands, and I think that it's coming along as well, but there is no way that it's going to be done when I put it up at crit. The Iceland painting is layer on layer on layer and thats why it's rich. Galapagos is like, three layers and layers require time to dry. It'll be on layer four or five by crit time. Oh well, I don't even care. I just care that I broke the fracking Berlin wall with my Iceland painting. Anyway, here it is as is:



Detail:



I'm going for "Sky of death assails the light of the growing earth". They're volcanoes. I'm rethinking the idea of the volcano as growth and fertility of the earth rather than as a destructive force, I suppose. I don't really know whats going on with the China painting. I just never got it started and now it's a stretcher with a layer of gesso. If I start start it and put it up at crit it's just going to look like ass. Of course, the level of finish could work for the concept rather than against it. Or I might just do something crazy that my mother would hate to the China painting I already have started. I dunno. We'll see.

Gluh. Crit at 8 tomorrow. They are getting some serious comments about crit time on the ICES form. Three out of fifteen weeks of class for crit? A little ridic.

listening to: Arcade Fire--Neon Bible