Losing Conan is a Big Loss

But I am only one person. It is hard to accept that Jay is seen as a better host. His appeal can only be understood as one that serves some lowest common denominator. Talking in terms of IQ, Jay may well be less threatening to that vast and rather insular middle of the country, where status quo goes; especially after an evening already spent on the couch in front of a TEE VEE… I dunno, I guess I’ll have even less to turn the TEE VEE on for, and should be grateful. Wait, no, didn’t I just discover 24 this week?

New Year’s Resolutions?

If ever there is a good time to take stock and shift focus, it’s now at the end of new years weekend, while we are all blizzarded in! I’d like to relax a little more in 2010. I’m no where near ready to retire, in fact, I don’t think I would ever even want to. But like most of you all, there are things I would like to be doing more.  For example, relaxing with friends and family, painting, writing and reading; things that all seem to get pushed off the lineup too easily in a typical day.

I’ve taken steps to insure that some of these things will indeed happen in 2010: a February trip to Nicaragua to paint with a friend is fast becoming a reality. As January gets underway I am wondering what it will be like to be one of those who migrate south for a little bit of the New England winter. Will I become a regular escapee, like so many around these parts? Will I like Central America? I’ve never been south of Key West. Can I manage to do enough painting and writing to be able to whole heartedly count the trip as an independent study part of my graduate program at UVM? (answers: probably, yes, and absolutely yes!).

Letter from an Old Friend

It was a complicated relationship, to say the least. A ten year sabbatical hasn’t diminished the sense that we did share a special world, but I don’t know where to begin, to begin again, or to continue at all. Not a romantic connection; if it had been, there would be different issues. Not lesser or greater, just different.

Click on images for better clarity

To do nothing is an option. If I do nothing, is it a wasted opportunity, or am I wisely avoiding stirring up old questions.

Light Dawns Slowly Over the Whole

Isn’t this the best explanatory model for so many of the messy debates in which we are immersed as a people, a country, … and humanity variously self aware? Perhaps it is the only narrative that actually works in the case of the world stage. If only we could see with 10,000 eyes. 

For example, the health care debate is a good object lesson. It is not one debate, it is many. With pendulum these weeks swinging precipitously from one extreme to another, the infinite shades of compromise possible are all too quickly undermined, mischaracterized, or otherwise painted out. We are the blindered lead by the blinded, we who can look at only those headline issues — single payer, public option, abortion, et al — as we try to navigate; who has time for more???

pencil on paper, unfinished, like most things in life

On the open sea, or in the woods, we don’t need entirely new instruments, but we need courage, good will and trust in the crew.

Waiting for Cards

It’s been a bit of a process, working with the print-prep department to get colors correct. Not sure why they are having so much trouble,  and am getting worried. I can’t settle for anything less than perfect, because the run will be costing me a lot of money and I have to live with the results for a long time!

detail from a recent and unfinished painting

One of the new card designs I am working on with Queen City Printers will be a winter image, because I only have two winter images in the line thus far. With no snow on the ground, and the summer vegetation all died back, things this week have a look that I ought to think about capturing for a future addition to the line; but it feels more like November than December.

Art shows galore, but don’t confuse busyness with getting much done

I have submitted work to SPA members show, Helen Day Art Center members show, and work is up through the end of November at the (Burlington) City Market on their members wall. I also have a few very large works in the Williams room at Davis Center on the UVM campus.

Evergreens, Field and Orange Sky — acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 $425,  (click on image for better version)

Through all of this, I find my peace and relaxation by either turning on a Law and Order type of show*, or getting into the woods, which I did briefly today on the Stowe Pinnacle. Not enough though. It was getting dark and I knew that if I didn’t turn back  I’d be in trouble trying to stumble out with only a crescent moon to light the way.

*actually I’ve never had such a long list of favorite shows: The Mentalist, House, The Good Wife, 30 Rock, Medium, Conan, SNL, and many Law and Orders and CSIs, and don’t forget John Stewart and Steven Colbert, although there is a conflict with Conan.

Color From Within

November is the month when we start to find our colors, and our cheer, from inside. Today is a typical November day with the rain, and the gray sky amorphous and nearly indistinguishable from the lake. The only feature indicating division is a very faint New York shore.

Here is a picture from a couple of days ago, when we still had the sun.

Click on image

The Year of the Lake

Show is up at City Market in downtown Burlington. Through November.

click on image for clear version

One of several paintings done from my community garden site at Rockpoint this fall. The massive spruce and pine trees on the road toward the Bishops House have always been a strong presence. I decided to take a second garden out there, and when I found that my assigned plot would be just footsteps south of them, I was thrilled, to say the least! Overall, gardening out there went well in spite of the two straight months of rain and tomato/potato blight. At the end of the season I finally began to paint out there, producing 5 works that can be played with all winter in my studio.

“If one has no horse, one is one’s own horse…” — Van Gogh

From the Telegraph.co.uk

• Letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, Nieuw-Amsterdam, 28 October 1883

Extract from the letter: “If something in you yourself says ‘you aren’t a painter’ — IT’S THEN THAT YOU SHOULD PAINT, old chap, and that voice will be silenced too, but precisely because of that. Anyone who goes to his friends and complains about his troubles when he feels like that loses something of his manliness, something of the best that’s in him. Your friends can only be those who fight against it themselves, rouse the active in you through their own example of action.

“One must take it up with assurance, with a conviction that one is doing something reasonable, like the peasant guiding his plough or like our friend in the scratch, who is doing his own harrowing. If one has no horse, one is one’s own horse — a lot of people do that here. You must regard it not as a change — as a deeper penetration.”

scary pumpkins, scary faces– what makes them so?

Jack-o-lanterns ought to be a good excuse to come up with the most horrifying faces possible, but this is easier said than done. Mine here are mostly just goofy, sad or confused looking. Instead of scaring, they look scared themselves.

Evil, or its embodiment as a sort of threateningness is not an emotion. If I had to characterize its appearance on a face, I think of the slant of eyebrow, gleem in eye, furled lip with teeth exposed, nostrils flaring? I better try another drawing.

But I also should say that I’ve never known a kid to be actually scared by a pumpkin.

if you want to create your own freaky-faced pumpkin, go to  http://www.cubpack81.com/images/carve_pumpkin.swf