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All right, so I spend a shit load of time making decisions. So what? These days, it’s a wonder I come to make any at all.

I feel good nowadays when I make a decision. I used to have two kinds of problems before.

Firstly, I used to make descions, but then I’d second guess them the entire time afterwards. Drove me NUTS!

2. I couldn’t make a decision at all. I mean, not to save my life!

I’d fall into some sort of anxiety-ridden hell hole of self-deprecation and head-crushing confusion.  And that was so hard to crawl out from.

And still, no decision was never made. (Woamp, woam) <– That’s that stupid music that plays when you don’t get your way. “Loser music!”

Nowadays, I take my time. I make up my mind and I commit to it. If it’s “wrong,” so what? It’s not the end of the world. Or is it? Ahhhhh!

I have decided to stop hoarding the work I have been doing. I feel I should share it. I mean, why hoard it? That’s stupid.

But when would I reveal it? At what opportunity? When will that come? Maybe never. So what the fuck?

I think I was afraid of someone or something coming along and bursting my bubble. I’m really happy with the work I’ve been doing lately, but I’ve been mentally fragile. Knowing this, I’ve been afraid to share my art because it’s the only thing (that is, besides mjp) that is making my life worth living and making me happy, and making me confident.

So, if I’m confident about it. That’s that. If someone wants to come along and shit on it, let them try. I’m probably a lot stronger than I think.

The new “body of work” actually starts at the end of last year, starting with Held by Sheer Willingness. It got a bad review in an art forum I belong to, but so what? It threw me off course a bit, but when it came down to it, I still really love this crazy painting.

The next one:

Then,

And then the focus started to get really honed in with Runaway Box, one of my favorites:

After that, I had some kind of breakthrough and painted my first piece of 2013:

In a recent post I spoke about how some of the new pieces have been coming to me. But a new discovery shows that I did not draw the next one in my drumset sketchbook like I thought I did. I dreamed I did! I just looked through so I could post the first preliminary sketch, and while there are a few similar drawings in there that I drew before I fell asleep that very night I thought I drew it, that one isn’t there. I suppose that is why I drew it again (well, not again) in Photoshop when I returned home.

It’s the first one that I happened to finish on those six panels that I prepped last month:

Read about what a Spin-flip is here.

And here is a pic of that sketchbook and a pic of the sketch for the pink painting at least:

The second one is called The Sander. Here is the preliminary sketch:

And here is the painting:

Now I am finishing up the third and fourth one and I’ll post them soon. Not so easy to draw them on the panels exactly the way you had them in your sketchbook, but I’m doing my best.

See ya soon!

I’m just waiting for my camera charge light to turn green and I think I will post the first two pieces of the series of seven? I suppose I’m still on the fence. Still thinking about it. Two are officially finished. The third one had a bit of a glitch in the Matrix, so it won’t be finished until later this week, or even the weekend, so I will be starting the next four this week and perhaps an eighth one will pop into my spaghetti brain. I really wanted to have eight in total before I showed them to anyone. I did, however, show a preliminary drawing on Google+ because that is where I spend all my social media time.

If any of you Facebook peoples wonder where I am, that’s where. Google+. If you aren’t on there yet, you should be. It is taking over Internetland.

So last week I worked, but not as much as I would have liked since I was ill. A different kind of ill if you had been following my entries. I have been feeling much better – with a lot of trepidation – which I suppose is normal. I am just glad I have been feeling better. 🙂

Little things made me appreciate my life. Actually, they usually do, but finishing little parts of the painting I was working on. It is not titled yet, but it has four black ovals. I was filling them in. I started with the edges, where I had to be very careful because they are against the finished birch wood. Just getting the line connected around from one end to the other made me do a happy dance. Filling them in was just icing on the cake. I was celebrating – and this particular painting isn’t even the one I like most. It’s the one I like least probably. Now that it’s all done, I like it pretty good. No feet, but I like it. It reminds me a bit of my 2004 work.

2004 was the year before I was picked up by the gallery, or rather, before they began courting me. It was a long process, yet everything seemed to have happened so fast. It was October and I did a residency at Vermont Studio Center. It was wonderful. Life changing really. I cried when I left to go back home, yet it was such a BIG deal that I even went.  Not too long before I went there, I was a shut in.

Not too many people know this about me, but there were a few years where I couldn’t leave the house, drive a car – I mean – I couldn’t even check the mailbox that stood a few steps outside our front door.  And at the time, I was in a wheelchair much of the time. It took years of therapy and reading books, and doing panic and phobia workbooks to get out of that mud, little by little. By the time I applied for that residency, I was barely ready for it. mjp had to fly out there with me and sort of set me up before it started so I could get used to the whole idea that I was going to be there for a month by myself without him and fly back alone.

My little secret that no one knew was that I came back a week early (pre-planned) and just didn’t answer my phone or use my computer, but I think my friend Suzan Woodruff knew and left a message about coming with her to meet George and the director at George Billis. It was kind of an important window of opportunity. I wasn’t even looking for a gallery. It fell into my lap, really.

These were the pieces that they ended up taking into inventory at the very end of 2004.

 

 

 

But, the ones I was thinking of in regards to the painting I’m talking about are these, which were done at the very wee-end of 2004 after I had a major surgery. Another story for another time.

 

 

I picked up my last piece from Billis the other day.

(Amusement Park,  2004. Acrylic and ink on dot marker paper, 38 x 27 inches.)