I'm painting again

I'm beginning my first oil painting in nearly fifteen years and possibly second oil ever. I've been a watercolorist for a long time and was also satisfied with the seemingly limitless agency of pen & ink.

Now, for an individualized instruction (that is not unlike an apprenticeship of old without the gopher/studio management and more self-development), I am painting oil. I continue with a series I had begun with 5 by 5 inch square heavy cold-pressed watercolors handling the subject matter of my recently passed grandmother and a book by Pessoa, posthumously reknowned and published entitled "The Book of Disquiet."

I have been working with the wheels removed from my easel on the third story of my farmhouse which I have recently learned to have once been host to a small rural beauty parlor. The aromas are once again rich and slightly intoxicating as were the perms of the late seventies and early eighties that were set in this space.

I am working less abstractly with oil and more voyeuristically. I am setting my goal on Hopperesque abstracted realism... thin layers, stacked with little caking, roughed architectural edges and skin that glows from within.

In honor of my cousin, a CT man turned Brooklynese, bachelor soon to be groom, I have included this image of his favorite and the most famous Hopper; "Night Hawks." Of course, this is an adaptation or appropriation of such. Please let me know of other parodies, but what I'm really looking for is a play put on that mimics this scene. I have already had some of my middle school art students bringing life to these characters in skits and one-acts.

I will include pics of my work as it becomes more... becoming.

I had finished reading for the evening, satisfied that I was being consistent with my measures of self-preservation. It was time to buckle down........ and stare at Ruby. She was asleep beside me, tucked beneath the duvet. I watch for fifteen minutes as small movements alternately show between her left cheek and her right hand of digits. I whisper and coo, and she smiles in her dreaming. I study the flatness of her thumbnail before looking at the flatness of my own. I tickle her wrist and kiss the bulge of her palm. I think about my years as a young girl, an adolescent, then a woman, and the divisions between those titles as being blurred the further along I go.

I think about Ruby as a young girl, as an adolescent, a woman and have deep hopes and heave deep sighs. River is my son, my boy. She is to be a model of my better times, my best and beyond what I have been. Now that I have a daughter, there is deep pressure to forgive myself for my times in becoming a woman. Those trials of great risk and great neurosis behind me, in a way, that are implicit in womanhood - particular to the women who developed at a solitary and strangely wild rate; free from the immediate influence of premature monogomous relationships... women who came of age basically untethered and on their own. Having entered motherhood with more life experience than I can bare to consider, I shoulder the task ahead... beyond the tender appreciative and surrendering kisses of adoration. I'm still here, and I am witness. Sweet dreams, Ruby.

Folie a Trios

It can't be common for three psychotics to share in one delusion, but this phenomenon occured this evening beside a billiards table in a small rural town called Topton.

Had we ever been decent pool players was not the question but rather the impossibility as was evident by the clear shots missed in that lounge in Topton.

It may have been the ice, the sore gums from spicy foods, or the terrible television program about the 200 weirdest ways a person can be killed. Albeit, we all psychotically believed that we had once "had it." One thing we recognized and could be seen to have been truly correct on knowing was that we weren't experienced poker players but craved its secrets. For those of you who don't have it memorized, as it is the first step after learning some method acting skills (or the behavioral tactics of nihilism), the ranking order for Texas Hold'em is, from least to greatest:

a high card

one pair

two pairs

three of a kind

straight

flush

full house

four of a kind

straight flush

royal flush (not to be confused with the potty humor that plagues my family gatherings).

There you have that. As far as some billiards tips, I found this from the wiki-how site on playing pool like a pro helpful.

Focus on the proper hit. As a beginner, don't waste time trying to make the ball "follow" or "draw" after hitting the cue ball. Every little extra thing you try to do will adversely effect your accuracy. Just hit the cue in the middle. Before every single shot you should take 2 or 3 practice strokes and then follow through. If you want to get fancy, you can hit the cue slightly above center to make the cue ball follow the ball you just hit or slightly lower than center to make the cue ball stop or actually spin back toward you after hitting the ball. Hitting the cue to the left or right of center is called " English " and will cause the object balls trajectory to be augmented in one direction or another. Not for beginners, stick to the center of the Cue Ball.