Great. Weight.

I've been hiking a lot lately, up in Forest Park, as I usually do when the weather is congenial.  Recently, the bottom of my left foot has been a bit sensitive, uncomfortable standing without a shoe on or without some other padding.  So I've been online, self-diagnosing.  Of course I have.  I've decided that it's probably a mild case of metatarsalgia or good old plantar fasciitis.  (I think I've dealt with the latter before - but the other foot? - which gradually went away.)

Explaining plantar fasciitis, that cheeky Wikipedia was coldly insensitive enough to say, "among non-athletic populations, it is associated with a high body mass index."  "High body mass"?  I do believe that that's just another way of saying that I'm too heavy for my own feet.  Which I believe is another way of telling me that I'm just too fat.  Thank you so much, Wikipedia, for informing me that I'm collapsing under my own weight.

[hysterical sobbing]

Sleep wear trends for the post-op pooch

Two Mondays ago - the day after my birthday - our dear little dog, Nicholas, started feeling very ill.  We had a few really scary days, going back and forth to the hospital, before they finally figured out that he'd ingested part of a doggy toy.  That Wednesday he had surgery.  We had more vet and hospital visits in the days after that, mostly because we wanted to be very sure that everything was going the way it should be and that he was as comfortable as we could make him.  He's doing fine now and almost finished up with his convalescence.  He's been a total trouper through the whole thing; G and I were completely wrecked!

(G tells a more detailed version of the story on her blog.) 

One of the most challenging aspects in the week and a half or so since his surgery has been sleep time.  We arranged our schedules so that, during the day, one or both of us was here to watch him, because the biggest concern was that he'd try and fuss with his incision.  But at night we needed to put him in what they call an e-collar, so that he'd be protected from himself while we slept.  At first he was quite obviously very uncomfortable and none of us slept much at all.  It's progressively gotten easier.  Everyone's seen the sad little dogs and cats burdened with what looks like a inverted lampshade on their heads.  Nicholas' versions were slightly different, and he has kindly agreed* to model them for you.

Model number one:  Thick transparent plastic.  Black Velcro closure.  Matching piping at base.

Pluses:  See-thru and Astro-chic.

Minuses:  Stiff and too small; it was right up against his chin and he couldn't move his head at all.  Also gave him a bruise on his neck.

Verdict:  Thank you.  We've got enough problems right now.  We'll keep looking.









Model number two:  Stiff but quite pliable blue synthetic fabric.  White edging and drawstring.

Pluses:  Softer and more size-adjustable.  Adaptable - can be worn facing out for sleeping, or folded back for day wear.  (see below)

Minuses:  It's a collar.  For a dog.  And Nicholas doesn't find that color blue at all congenial.

Verdict:  It's still a big, floppy, annoying thing.  Thank you, but we'll keep looking.

[Folded back when worn during the day.]
















Model number three:  Green cotton onesie, size: 3 months. Embroidery of an effeminate monkey on the side.

Pluses:  Our vet told us that Nicholas might be more comfortable sleeping in a onesie for the last few days of his convalescence.  It fits perfectly and is a nice chartreuse color.  The monkey embellishment is a nice - if rather ironic - reference to the cause of all his problems.  The manufacturer placed three snaps at the butt-end; if one only connects the two outer snaps, there is ample space left to accommodate a dog's tail.  It's cuuute!

Minuses:  He wiggled out of it the first night. 

Verdict:  He goes back to model number two for the duration.





*  No dogs - meaning Nicholas - were harmed in the production of this photo shoot.  Mr. O'Dittle is displaying that rather pathetic aspect merely to give the public some idea of his recent suffering.  In reality - finally, happily - he's feelin' fine!

Out of nowhere

[I don't know where this post comes from.  I don't know what got my thinking moved in this direction, but.... ]

I hate guns.  I hate everything about them.  I know we can't conceive of a world without guns, I know our laws guarantee a "right" to them.  I understand that people can get some sort of feeling of empowerment from shooting guns, can enjoy a thrilling transmission of power.  But even when they're used responsibly, when they're directed at nothing more sentient than a firing range target, I still hate them.

To me they're one of the most blatant symbols of our remove from the natural world.  That our machine-making minds have found a way to maim and kill - without effort - without contact.

If all I have to fight you with is a knife or a sword or my hands, if I have to look you in the eye and wonder the outcome, aren't I going to be a lot more cautious and rational when considering battle?  Just like a smart dog or lion or crow is going to make a judgement about whether a fight is worth it or not.  But if I have a gun - or a mortar or a big bomb - and you don't, I know I'll win.  Easy.  That core of a concept, our internalization of it, I think has had a sickening, dislocating effect on us as humans.

Violence is natural.  No matter how much we try to avoid it - usually a very healthy impulse - it's inherent in life and death.  In small and large ways.  But for violence to be understood, to be healthily processed by our puny human brains, I believe it has to present itself on a human scale.  The velocity of violence has to present in human time.

***

When I was living in San Francisco in the eighties, one of the many less-than-glamorous jobs I scrounged around to get was cleaning house for some people who had a t-shirt business in Mill Valley, across the bridge in Marin County.  The owner of the business always seemed more than a little paranoid.  Really kind of spooky.  He slept with a gun under his pillow.  And he was usually good about putting it away before I got dropped off - I was always alone in the house - but one or two times I had to pick up the gun and put it on the bedside table so that I could make the bed.  The only time I've held a gun.

It was so much heavier than I would have expected.  Heavy steel, machine cold.  Heavy.  Sickening, unnatural.  I found it very disturbing to even touch it.  It wasn't so much a fear I felt.  It just felt like an evil thing.  There are other weapons that can have another purpose, another life beyond violent intent.  A dagger or a sword can be beautifully decorated and ornamental.  It can be worn or hung on the wall and admired for its craftsmanship.  But I found no beauty in this heavy metal object.  And it was made for no other purpose.  For the few seconds it was in my hand, all I could feel from it, hear from it:  This is meant to kill with.  This is meant to kill with.

Decidedly not the same thing....

Preparing to paint - research, designing, Photoshopping, gridding, drawing - is not painting.  Buying art supplies and attending art openings is not painting.   Blogging and feathering my website is not painting.  Since finishing my current show at Winston Wächter and tossing off the small nude that's in the group show at Froelick, I haven't actually painted anything.

There isn't anything to paint.  I'm in the planning stages of several paintings - the beginnings of a whole show, really - but that doesn't give me any of the kind of satisfaction I get from being in the process of actually "building" a painting.  Putting stroke upon stroke of paint upon the panel.  Finishing each little section, moving forward in pictorial space.  Until some paint goes down onto the panel's surface, it's an idea, but it isn't a painting.  And I have nothing I can put paint on.

I used to whine constantly that it was sooo hard for me to just settle down and sit down to paint.  I was too nervous and scattered and dreaded the necessary intense deployment of concentration.  I could squander hour after hour, though, fussing with all the other parts of the art business that aren't actually painting.  And now?  Everything is reversed.  And even though I'm very frustrated over the dearth of paintable surfaces here in the studio right now, I'm very grateful for that reversal.

Two PTSDs walk into a bar....

So what happens when my lurking PTSD comes smack up against that of another struggling friend?  No joking matter, that.  It's unexpectedly wrenching.  In the midst of all the wonderful things that have been happening for me lately, I've had drama on the sidelines.  And I've directed much more attention and worry toward it that I probably should have.  I've added in my own little internal drama.

A very dear friend of mine is having a very difficult time right now, dealing with this insidious illness.  This isn't anything new, but part of its manifestation this time has been to turn on me, the angry rhetoric escalating, and then the grand gesture of officially and harshly discarding me as a friend.  We've never been anything but the most loving friends, always very supportive of each other, personally and in all our artistic endeavors.  So I was completely unprepared for this development, this turn.

Even more so, I've been startled by my own response to it.  I've been extremely anxious all week.  The queasy stomach, the feeling that "something bad" is going to happen.  (I have to admit, the timing hasn't helped; June 9th and 12th are the anniversaries of my dad's death and a car accident that G and I were in, the same year, three days apart.)  I know one of the commonest symptoms of PTSD is just that kind of anxiety.  A gnawing panic and a compulsion to try and tightly control all the aspects of your life.  Also anger, usually misplaced or misdirected.  I can tell myself over and over that my friend's rejection has absolutely nothing to do with me or anything I've done, that it's only the illness.  But it still hurts.  And the hurt makes me mad, because it's hard for me to just accept the hurt.  And the mad doesn't conjure anything productive.  Because you can't just slap the crazy out of someone.  (Though I can totally visualize that working - smack! and they come around - like they always do in the movies.  And, of course, that's crazy.)

I can pretty much see from the other side of it, understand a lot of the cock-eyed reasoning that's in play in my friend's mind, and have at least a small degree of perspective on the situation.  But the unexpected rejection still really gets to me.  An unearned rejection.  And one I can't fight, one I can't work my way back from with reasoning and support.  This seems to be a very tender spot in my emotional make-up; I guess it hasn't been entirely clear to me until now.  Maybe in the "big picture" of my life that's why this has happened, why this kind of situation is playing out again.  Because, happening this time, it brings up all the times in the past when I couldn't protect myself from the rejection, from being traumatized by the shock of it.  I suppose it happens to everyone.  I'm sure everyone has found themselves in that position, helpless.  I don't know, but maybe it's a bit more difficult for me to shake off than it is for most, considering my own struggles with PTSD.  But after I've taken care of myself, worked the methods that help with my own over-reactions, when I can start to turn the corner from the upset and get back some light and perspective... it still hurts.  And it doesn't hurt any less when I know it's not my fault, and that it really isn't the other person's fault.  It just hurts, and I guess I'll have to find a way to let that be.

I love my wife. Period.

Happy birthday to my wonderful wife, G.  A most remarkable person.  I'm so blessed that she loves me so well and - perhaps more importantly - continues to willingly endure me.

This is the image from my birthday card to her this year.  We both go Photoshop wacky to celebrate any of our holidays.  After all the paintings of me festooned with diamonds, feathers, etc., it only seemed fair that she should bear the burden of outrageous glamour for a little while.

Des jeux sérieux de beauté

Tuesday evening we were in Seattle for the opening of my new show at Winston Wächter, Des jeux sérieux de beauté.  Some serious games of beauty.  Which I hope the work is, which I believe it is.

It was a lovely night.  Great turnout, friendly people.  And I actually wasn't all that nervous; I didn't have time to be.  Right at the beginning of the event, I had a few friends stop in to wish me well, and it just kept rolling on from there.  As soon as I finished talking to one person, someone else stepped in to talk with me.  I often feel conversationally awkward in these kinds of situations, but everyone was so nice, so generous, that it was all just a pleasure. 

It is a bit odd to talk exclusively about yourself and your art for more than two hours straight.  As someone who's rather full of himself, you'd think that it wouldn't bother me.  But it got to the point where the gross accumulation of me, me, me was a bit embarrassing; by the end of the evening I had a sore throat from talking about myself so much.

When G and I arrived at the gallery, several hours before the opening, Michael Upchurch, the arts writer for the Seattle Times, was already there, looking at the show and making notes.  He had reviewed the group show that was my introduction to Winston Wächter and had said nice - and really smart - things about my work.  So I was thrilled that he wanted to interview me for this show.  When we spoke on Tuesday afternoon, he couldn't have been nicer, and the resulting review/interview that appeared in the paper this morning couldn't have been more flattering.  It's been quite a week, and I'm very grateful for everyone's kindness.

Correcting a grievous cosmetic injustice

Recently, G and I felt like wallowing in extreme camp and got out our copy of Mommie Dearest; you'll have to agree that it more than fits that particular bill.  One of the worst directed and acted A-pictures of all time, in my opinion.  Sadly, I can't truly enjoy the wretchedness of the thing because, while watching nearly every scene, I'm distracted and obsessed by one thing - OK, two things:  the eyebrows.  The misbegotten, misshapen blobs of make-up that were applied to the forehead of Miss Faye Dunaway in a botched attempt to recreate the celebrated eyebrows of Miss Joan Crawford.

The Crawford eyebrows?  You set out to make a biopic of Joan Crawford and that's what you screw up?  Because there are so few pictures of Miss Crawford to work from?  Say what?  Her brows are the most recognizable thing about her appearance; even her shoulder pads have to take second place to the eyebrows.  (The taut and precise mouth comes in third.)  I'm veering clear of her very inspired performance, but at the time this film was made Faye Dunaway was physically pretty much perfect casting for Crawford.  It isn't Crawford's bone structure, honestly, but it really works.  And though I would have given her a darker red lip color in most of the scenes, they got the hair and wardrobe generally, close to... adequate.  Not embarrassing, anyway.  But how did they manage to mangle her eyebrows so badly? 

Early in her career, Crawford had as many variations in eyebrow shape and heft as she did hairstyle and hair color but, by the early forties when Mommie Dearest commences, the two little items had settled into their iconic pattern; with time they colonized more territory, but the shape remained the same: a fairly straight, un-arched line angling slightly up from the bridge of the nose, and then tilting down toward the temple.  (The right eyebrow was usually set a little higher and slightly more rounded; they got more exactly symmetrical as she got older and they got bigger.)  Dunaway's imposter brows are set way too high, start off curved where Crawford's are fairly blunt, and have an immediate big round arch.  (They also make them too heavy too early in the story, so one loses the impact of their ever onward and upward expansion upon her aging face.)  And to make matters infinitely worse, they're hard-edged and shiny with unpowdered eyebrow pencil, pointing out the fact that they're hair-free and completely bogus.  And, goddammit, the real Crawford eyebrows were quite obviously grown.

This level of artistic failure and professional incompetence on the part of Dunaway's make-up people and all others responsible deserves nothing less than the patented Crawford bitch-slap - something along the lines of the specific wailing she gives to Osa Massen toward the beginning of "A Woman's Face" would be appropriate, I think.  But since those responsible for this great cosmetic fiasco are not anywhere at hand, I have resorted to the corrective and healing powers of Photoshop.

 The Genuine Joan:

 The False Joan:

 The Revised False Joan:

***

In choosing the images, I went with some of the posed "publicity photos" that were created for the film, then tried to find pictures of Crawford that were similar.  I arranged both sets in some some of chronological order but, in my own defense, I don't know what period they were going for with (from left) the fourth and fifth pictures of Miss Faye, so I aimed at somewhere between the fifties and sixties.

As an added bonus, in the lightbox you can click back and forth between the second two images and watch Faye's eyebrows wiggle.  One of life's unexpected pleasures....

Seventeen

Yesterday, May 15th, was the seventeenth anniversary of my employment at Powell's Books.  Which is absolutely unfathomable to me.  I can't grasp what seventeen years looks like, what it feels like.  So much has happened in that time, but it also seems like that time hasn't passed at all.

(I guess I don't really understand how time functions.  I can't ever really pin it down.  I tend to be just a bit late for a lot of things, almost on time.  Though I nearly always make deadlines and appointments, it often feels as though there's some "higher power" making sure it all lines up for me.  I know some people speak of the passing of time as being an illusion.  That the past, present, and future exists, plays out, concurrently.  Maybe some sense of that concept rattles around in my brain and causes my vagueness.  For me, time floats.)

May of 1995 was also the month I began my career as a professional artist.  While the number of accumulated years still eludes my comprehension, as regards a professional artistic career, at least, seventeen years means something to me.  It means that I've worked hard, made a bunch of art, struggled a bit, learned a lot.  I can say, yes, I am an artist.  A mid-career professional artist.  That's who I am.  That's what I do.

For all of these seventeen years, being an artist and working at Powell's have been the twin aspects that were always the main focus of my attention. But in the last few years there's been a sharp change in the balance of that focus.  It's as though I've always had two lenses, and I would look from one to the other and back again.  For most of this time, my hours spent at Powell's got the bulk of my attention.  I put so much thought and energy - not always wisely deployed - into that environment.  And the view from that lens was always brightly lit and in focus.  By comparison, I was never able to see as clearly from the art lens.  My plans for advancing my career were always of the vaguest nature.  And I never had the time or energy to make enough art which, in turn, always sabotaged any plans I might have made clearer.  I always knew that in order to get further with my art career, I'd need to find a way to recalibrate my focus.

Thanks to some good counseling and working to get clear about what I really wanted to do with my life and career, and thanks to the perfect timing of the Artists Wanted award, I was able to go down to part time at work.  Which changed everything.  Now the balance is much healthier.  When I look through that day-job, part-time-work lens, things look fairly vague.  I can see it for what it is and give it its due, but it doesn't suck me in anymore.  When I look into the lens of my art-making career, the focus is sharp.  There are so many paintings to be made.

I don't know when the lens that represents Powell's will cease to exist.  Beginning, middle, and end aren't always easily distinguishable for me.  It's that time thing, I guess.  But any way I look at it, I'm grateful for the seventeen years so far, what they've taught me, and where they've lead.

Les Perruches

I've recently finished the painting that will be used for the invitation to my first solo exhibition at Winston Wächter in Seattle.  The show opens in June and continues until the end of August.  I'm very happy that this particular painting will represent the body of work.  I started work on this painting early last year, before nearly all of the others that will be in the show.  It's also my first completed example of a specific kind of painting that I've wanted to attempt for a long time.  On more than one occasion, during my last few shows, when being asked about what I hoped my future work might be, I said that I wanted to find some way to take 17th century Dutch genre painting - specifically the figure in an interior - and meld it with a late 18th century French aesthetic.  Perhaps an odd, even perverse, idea, but I really wanted to see what this would look like.  And I thought, starting Les Perruches, that I might finally be ready, technically, to pull it off.

Les Perruches [the parakeets] - acrylic on panel - 30x24 - 2012

 ***

I knew that I wanted green drapes.  I think that was the first element that came to me.  The only certain one.  There were several related ideas - incorporating a fairly shadowy interior, with a good amount of color, especially reflected color - that shuffled around in my head for quite some time.  But all of the half-shaped concepts featured more or less quantities of green drapery at a window or door, letting in a limited amount of light upon the centrally placed, full-length figure.

On a nice sunny day early last year, I put on the old Gap dress shirt that I'd modified to serve as a  low-cut dress bodice, and G took pictures of me as I posed in the thin line of light that was let in through the nearly closed pocket doors that divide the two main rooms of our apartment.  I was the first particular of the composition.

The other particulars were assembled in differing ways.  As I hadn't yet made a big, puffy red satin skirt that I could pose in - I have one now - I worked from a photograph of a 19th century gown that's in the collection of Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, inventing the ribbon trim and sash.  I adapted the coiffure from a fashion drawing of the time; both gown and hairstyle would be appropriate for the mid to late 1780s.  Most often, at this time, bodices would be trimmed with lace or some sort of a ruffle at the neckline, and/or filled in with an often quite puffed out, gauzy fichu.  But I decided to go with a plain neckline - certainly not incorrect - which also has the benefit of showing a bit of chest hair; I'd never want to entirely hide the fact that there's a man in that dress.

I really love the word perruche and, after deciding on the inclusion of a bird to be juxtaposed with a stylishly improbable hairstyle, wanted to use it for the title.  I quickly found that I had mistakenly thought it was the French word for parrot, when it is actually the word for parakeet or budgie.  Turns out the French word for parrot is perroquet.  Which is terribly confusing.  So I did a bit of research and found that the parakeet group is much broader than just the little domesticated, stripey birds I've always seen in cages.  (Actually, it seems that parakeets as well as cockatoos, cockatiels, etc., are all just different forms of parrot.)  And I was happy to discover that there were plenty of varieties that were called parakeets yet looked sufficiently parrot-like to serve my specifications of size and color.  I chose a Red-masked Parakeet, or Conure à tête rouge.  I found a photograph that met my compositional needs, though I did have to reverse the lighting.  I love the particular angle of his turning head.

As I said, I had different ideas about what the room might look like.  But then I saw a photograph of  a sequence of rooms at Versailles that I thought would be perfect.  The petit appartement de la reine is a beautiful and celebrated suite of small rooms hidden behind the queen's state rooms, facing onto an interior courtyard.  Facing that same enclosed courtyard and turning the corner from the petit appartement, is a little known series of four private rooms.  They had rarely if ever been more than a service passage - behind unexpected, awkwardly placed doors there are cramped little staircases leading to the floors above and below - but it was also the only private way to get from the queen's rooms to that of the king's; a door hidden in the wall next to the queen's bed in her state chambre lets into this passage.  (Famously, Marie Antoinette fled by way of these rooms, escaping the rampaging mob that October night in 1789.)

As far as I can tell, these rather haphazardly shaped rooms had never been updated or re-decorated. At least not after the beginning of the 18th century. So I took the basic structure and gave it a modest face-lift. I simplified the paneling and added new elements that are in the neo-classical style that was au courant for the 1780s. I think of this as an "economical make-over", as if the theoretical owner wanted to be very stylish, but didn't want to spend too much money. I could have added color or gilding to the paneling - I considered adding some background tinting to portions of the over-door carving - but I think that, in the end, I prefer the subtle shifts in color reflected onto the plain white walls.

                                                                                        

I wanted something particular for the round cartouche over the door, most likely some mythologically themed tableau.  I was beginning to scrape around in my brain, thinking I'd have to design something from scratch.  Which, honestly, I wasn't looking forward to.  But somehow I managed to remember a cameo brooch that had belonged to my mother's paternal grandmother.  It was always in my mother's jewelry box when I was a child, though I never remember her wearing it.  She gave it to G as a wedding present.  I adapted the design, and I'm happy to have included something of my own family's history in this piece.

I couldn't figure out what painting should go in the picture frame I intended for the wall at the left of the composition.  I thought I might come up with some frothy romp - something very Fragonard-ish - or another mythological tableau.  But then, out of nowhere, I had the idea that I could use one of my own paintings.  Le Passage was a previous exercise in that Dutch/French blending I spoke of, though an exterior rather than interior; it's inspired by a painting by de Hooch.  I really enjoyed making a miniature version  of my own work, and it was especially fun to imagine the painting in shadow, with an extreme foreshortening.

Le Passage - acrylic on panel - 24x18 - 2009

One of the things I really like - and kept - about the actual rooms is the peculiar variations in the wooden floor, but then I had to work pretty hard to get the sections of parquet de Versailles laid out properly; Photoshop wasn't nearly the help I'd hoped for.  Having a carpet to hide some of it was a blessing.  I adapted the design of a very stylish neo-classical rug that would have been perfect for that fictional re-decoration of the 1780s.  I simplified it, changed most of the colors and added different elements.  It was fun to design it to coordinate with the "new" paneling.  While not overly match-y, both incorporate clusters of leaves, ribbons, scrolled vegetation, etc.

Surprisingly difficult to find an image of a cat sitting in this position.  As it was, I had to change the lighting and reposition the tail.  I love having animals in my work, but the cat was added mainly as a compositional device; I needed something in that corner.  Mainly for balance.  Only after the fact did I wake up to the whole cat/bird dynamic.  That rather clever subtext was some sort of divine intervention, I guess - but I suppose I should just say that I'd planned it all along....