And again, apologies...

It's not such an easy matter to remember to update this blog.

Also, when I don't have any new paintings to show, it's kind of defeating the purpose to make any entry. After all, how many ways can you say "Rats, nothing happening"?

But then I turn around and the couple of weeks (OK maybe a bit more than that) has resulted in quite a few fun paintings. Of course, they have nothing whatsoever to do with the last entry and that so-called epiphany of understanding and conceptual meaning (blah, blah, blah...).

No, as usual, these are all about what looks right to me at the moment - nothing more. Hope they look right to you, too...

(P.S. Open Studios at The Jackson Art Center in DC on April 28th. See you then.)

 Golden Fields 30 x 40

Side by Side 36 x 48

 Full Blooms 30 x 48

Geraniums 2013 IV 30 x 40

Edges 30 x 40

Home Sweet Home I 30 x 48

Home Sweet Home II 30 x 48

Home Sweet Home III 40 x 40

See you sooner than last time, I hope!

Thoughts

Parkinson's law is alive and well. As I recall, its main message could be boiled down to: "paper begets paper".
How true this remains.

In this great nation, whose purpose is to give individuals the wherewithal and space to pursue their dreams (thereby enriching the entire human race), the same tendency holds sway - every perceived wrong must be addressed with a law or legal ruling that will apply in all circumstances that remotely approximate the original wrong.
We allow for no common sense approaches to judging individual events. And yet, every event is individual.

Consider the homeowner's association that went heavily into debt fighting to impose ludicrously minor rules. Consider the homeowners who brought that association to its knees by being unwilling to mediate their differences.
All have lost. The association must sell what was the community's central green space in order to pay its legal fees. The homeowners - not only the litigants - will lose their open space. I expect their community spirit is already destroyed.

Consider our larger community. We debate and argue and battle ideas to death. Then we vote. The vote should bring some sense of accomplishment or compromise. At least we are supposed to honor the vote.

So what the _______________ is going on now?

Almost a month since my last post.

The last time I posted, I was in a production slump (as is often the case) but the one painting that was worthwhile was interesting.

Not only has that painting survived the cut, but it has made me consider what I am trying to communicate when I paint. I can't remember if I've mentioned my original artist's statement in previous posts, but this painting brought me full circle back to it.

I stopped working on it at this point because I saw it was finished, although I couldn't have told you then why I thought that. 

My original thinking was that it was the sun bursting through from behind the clouds. But rapidly I added interpretations: it is the reality underlying the material universe, it is a tear in the celluloid of an old-fashioned film, it is enlightenment breaking through the confusion of everyday.

Since this painting, I have begun to consider something new. In the past years, my painting has been strictly visual - based on representation, and finished when I judged it to be a satisfactory visual product.

The concept of an underlying reality, however, is very seductive. 

I find myself planning to incorporate that concept into a line of paintings: the quantum series (?). 

These paintings will have layers purposely constructed (unlike my previous paintings that were entirely fortuitous) that represent various layers of reality. With matter as we know it, it is scale of observation that determines what we see as a surface. In other words, underlying the real world we see is the vast open space that sings between electrons and neutrons and protons and photons (in layman's terms entirely!).

So, more to come, I hope.