The painting I worked on yesterday was finished almost as if somebody or something stopped me and removed me from it. It was a peculiar feeling. Here is how it happened. I was ready to go for a jog at three in the afternoon. While passing by my easel I returned to the painting and made some strokes with paint knife. The next thing I know three in the afternoon became four. Without much thinking I stopped my work and went for a run. I came back from my jog, looked at the painting. It was clear, the painting was done.
Before I went for a run I thought that there was going to be something to fix on the canvas the next day, but when I looked at it after the run I burst into a laugh. The painting was giving me a character expressing this hard to define mood of “whatever bitch.”
This painting showed me what I enjoy seeing in paintings. It also gave me a glimpse of how my skill set is developing. It is funny to catch myself on a thought that every last painting I create, that painting becomes my favorite, of course, until the next one.
I used only the hooker’s green hue with the white on the painting I keep calling “Mike or Whatever Bitch.” The painting was done using only one brush and a paint knife. I became more aware of how I hold my paint tools and what kind of brush and knife strokes come out of me. There is this feeling that I want to bring more weird characters like that onto my canvases. They create specific moods I go for. I wonder if all this development on my small canvases is going to translate into my large ones.
Originally written on 01-30-18
It is quite amazing to experience the same feeling I get while rehearsing in theater from my work on my canvases. Let me explain what I mean by that. There is always this one day during rehearsals when almost as if by some sudden magic you get the key to whatever needs to happen next, almost like some kind of revelation about what you actually enjoy seeing in your work.
So now I look at my last two canvases and grasp that this type of paintings I like myself. There is a certain relaxation about how the paint should be laid. It almost feels like my brush/knife strokes are on the edge of being accidental. The amazing part in this is, my hands somehow already know where and what to put on a canvas to achieve this relaxed-on-the-edge-of-being-accidental feel. Of course after a few more paintings I might be crying here from frustration that somehow this is not happening the way it should be or clap my hands about how I found a new way to lay my paint down. All this doesn’t matter now. What matters at the moment is the result I have on these two canvases.
Funny how sometimes when I get too tense in my hands and shoulders while putting paint on a canvas I actually have to remind myself to relax and let my hands do their work, because somehow they know what to do next. Then there is another feeling I get after painting in very intense strokes. My eyes all of a sudden focus into subtle detailing and my brush strokes become completely different.
At the moment I have a canvas covered with cadmium orange hue. It is playing nicely with the hooker’s green on Mike or Whatever Bitch. Sticking to one color is the key for me right now. Of course I might find myself putting some paint strokes using another color. But this type of strokes should become either very subtle or very strong. They really should become about the other color rather than the one I start with. Now that I think The Blue Boy Richard and His Pink Tailed Pet Fish became that type of a painting. I started with the violet, but then covered everything with the cerulean blue leaving just a bit of the violet I started with on the canvas.
Originally written on 01-31-18
UNDER THE FLUORESCENT LIGHT 
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