I’ve worked another six+ hours on this piece, and still not much progress. It’s hard to believe I’ve put that many hours into it, and it’s still so far from done.

My slowness is making me super nervous about how I’ll manage making more pieces in this series over eleven months. I can pretty much count out three of the pieces in this series since they are in NY at Stellarhighway. The first one I did in the series was sold last year, so that one is gone, too.

I’m basically starting from scratch with the one I’m working on now. I have one other here that I finished last year. Then, I started one other on a birch panel. I may have mentioned how I accidentally removed the pencil lines from it, so I have to redraw it on there. Very frustrating.

I’m going to be talking to the Brooklyn gallery on the 30th of May. I can probably get a better read on what he wants to do with the three he has. I’ll have to tell him that if he doesn’t sell by next year, and if he doesn’t want to put me in a show, I will need them back. But why can’t I just paint faster??? I feels like every other artist I know paints quickly. Or, at least they get several paintings done each month.

However, I can’t work more than three hours a day right now. My hips feel like they’re on fire from standing there. I’m a bit too stupid to sit on a stool. But it’s because I feel like I can’t otherwise position myself over the table. When I’m working on watercolors or gouache (which I’ll be doing soonly), I can sit down. With oil painting, I need to maneuver around all the wet portions to get the correct brushwork I want.

Jeez, I’m starting to sound like a broken record, bitching about my pain, bitching about my work, and just always bitching. 

Speaking of which, I’ll tell ya, this painting comes from an old black-and-white photo of my mom with her two friends on a trip to Mexico in 1951. She was sixteen when the picture was taken. She’s on the far right, and it doesn’t look like her at all. I don’t know what happened here, but I think it’s probably too small to get it exactly right. (The whole piece is only 16 x 20 inches.) But maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s not like she’ll see it. And no one can compare these paintings to the photographs I’m taking them from.

I still plan to screw the painting up more (on purpose) because I feel like it’s not all that compelling yet. The point of these pieces is to include a very different take on what we see, and the past. I probably need to write more about what the hell I’m doing in this series, so I can talk a little more about the work when the time comes. That is, if I can complete enough work before then.