Set Up

I just sent this image off for a show at the Blackfish of recent graduates from schools in Oregon that is happening this summer. It is the only 'finished' painting that I have to show for this school year so far, but I do have A LOT of work in various stages that some might even call finished.

This work comes from a series of photos that I was taking of the messes in my house. In this particular image, the object in the foreground is a rendering of a sculpture that my daughter made at school out of recycleables and masking tape. I've since started making some of my own Kindred-style sculptures, which are making it into more recent work. 

By the way, it's oil on panel, 30 x 45", entitled: Set Up.

Easter Sunday

Me: What are you doing wacky? Why don't you put some shoes on?

H: I'm looking for this certain type of bug that likes the rain.

Me: Oh yeah?

H: I've found it in these tufts of grass and I've found it's better to hunt them without shoes.

Deep Conversation with a 6-Year Old Person

My daughter was home from school today fighting off yet another bug. This is an excerpt of our lunchtime conversation:

K: Mom, who made us?

Me: I don't know. That's a big question.

K: The biggest question?

Me: What about 'why'?

K: Why are we here? Maybe we are robots sent to find out if there is anything bad here.

Me: Is there (anything bad)?

K: Yes. A war.

Me: Anything else? 

K: Scorpions.

Me: Is there anything good? 

K: Stuffed animals. Dogs.

From Recent Reading

I've been doing some reading about memory processes, specifically how traumatic memories differ from ordinary memories. This quote from Edward O. Wilson is particularly poetic, I think.

"The brain is an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern. Since the mind recreates reality from the abstractions of sense impressions, it can equally well simulate reality by recall and fatasy. The brain invents stories and runs imagined and remembered events back and forth through time."

Fish Funeral

I also wanted to share this anecdote from a couple of weeks ago:

March 16, 2009
Today, our morning started out with a goldfish funeral. Fin, one of the two fish we took on last year after Hollis’ first grade science class was done with their aquarium unit, was spotted by Kindred floating at the top of the tank during breakfast. As it was a school day, we were rushed for time, but had to slow down to properly deal with the death of one of our two family pets. Both of the kids were very upset and I vaguely recalled the names of the stages of grief as they ‘bargained’ and ‘denied’ that the fish was really gone. Kindred even wondered about her own liability, asking whether she might have accidentally given the fish her flu germs. In reality, it was probably a combination of old age and too much time between water changes, which would leave the blame in my court.

The passing gave us an opportunity to reflect about death and discuss what happens to the spirit of a creature when it is no longer inhabiting the body. I had to admit that I didn’t know for sure, but I had some ideas and was interested in hearing theirs.

We found a small box, wrapped the delicate golden-orange body in a scrap of fabric with and intricate gilt design and Kindred put a message in the box before I closed it. I buried it in the small herb garden outside the kitchen door that we started in the fall shortly after moving into the house and promised to plant something there once the herb starts showed up at the local vegetable market.

The kids keep checking the other fish for signs of grief. He is sitting listless at the bottom of the bowl like both fish always did together after receiving a fresh bowl of oxygenated-water (I changed the water immediately to do my part to avoid back to back losses). I am not sure if it is because he is now alone or because he is really more still than usual that I too read grief into his somewhat ordinary fish behavior. I wear my own grief inelegantly most of the time and I find it impossible to reassure my children mindlessly. So, instead I reminded them that everything dies eventually and nothing stays the same. I don’t know if this was the right thing. It seems too harsh a reality even to me.
Photo by William Eggleston

Where I'm at...

It's true that I am getting back to work. I've been in the studio everyday this week so far, making some progress on the slew of unfinished paintings in various stages that are stacked up in there. I'm also trying to get clear about my intentions with this new work as I need to give it a name soon. Even though my new work shares a strong association with still life, there is also something about it that relates to landscape. Today, I went to the library to look for any contemporary landscape painting and came back with three other hefty books, but I couldn't find anything on the topic for which I initially set out. One of the books is a catalog from a Eggleston retrospective, I love his photographs, but didn't like learning more about his personal life in the fairly recent documentary about him.

Recently, the paintings that I have been the most engaged with have been those that focus on things that my kids have made or the arrangements of things left behind after they are done playing. I've been wondering if I want to make that relationship between their creative process and my own the focus of the body of work. Today, I realized that it is actually more important to me, in thinking about this idea of the domestic landscape and what is 'left outside the frame', that I include less predictable and innocent subject matter in the series. I'm interested in presenting a full picture of domestic life, or what is behind the scenes. Though this is based on personal experience and started from 'found scenes' in my home, I am now considering pushing some of the images so that there is a question about what is fact and what is fiction--introducing some more ambiguity.

This is an apt metaphor for my life!

I love this guy. See more "Let's Paint T.V." here.