Friday night in the studio

Another Work in Progress

31x51" acrylic on canvas, same painting as posted yesterday. Maybe I liked it better before. 

Pantry

A Work in Progress

A Small Drawing

Oil Pastel on Paper

A trip to the glass junkyard.

Johnnie from Houston invited me on a trip to the glass junkyard today. Her friend Lydia drove us through parts of town I didn't even know existed. I bought a glass "pot" (fruit bowl?) and a few other broken pieces. But mostly, I took some amazing photos which I have only begun to explore in Adobe Lightroom.

One Must be a Seer...

I say one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The Poet makes himself a seer by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses. All forms of love, suffering, and madness. He searches himself. He exhausts all poisons in himself and keeps only their quintessences. Unspeakable torture where he needs all his faith, all his super-human strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the one accursed–and the supreme Scholar!–Because he reaches the unknown! Since he cultivated his soul, rich already, more than any man! He reaches the unknown, and when, bewildered, he ends by losing the intelligence of his visions, he has seen them. Let him die as he leaps through unheard of and unnameable things: other horrible workers will come; they will begin from the horizons where the other collapsed!

~Arthur Rimbaud
from a letter to Paul Demeny May 15,1871

Used Stretcher Bars

The previous owners left lots of recyclable canvases and stretcher bars. My neighbor lent me an electric staple gun and some stretching pliers so that I can remove the old canvases and stretch new ones.

Cooking Dinner :: Reflection in Skylight

First Studio Visit...with Jo Seiser from Steven's Point, WI

First Pass on a 28x34" Canvas

First Painting in SMA - September 2013

Acrylic on 31x51" canvas

Second Painting in Progress

Acrylic on (found) canvas
30x48"

Second "attack": black, white, and acrylic painting medium on gessoed canvas.

A New Bedroom "Door"

I bought the gold brocade curtains years ago for my large, high-ceilinged place in Palm Springs and brought them to SMA because I thought that each bedroom should have some sort of "door". After determining that I'd need nothing more complicated than an expandable curtain rod to hang them, I walked down to Don Pedro, a large local hardware store on the "Ancha" (the wide road to Celaya). In addition to the curtain rod, I needed a hammer, nails, and a hose for the garage and sidewalk.

How to shop at Don Pedro
First you take a number. Then you explain to the guy at the counter (in Spanish) what you want, and he goes back into a huge two-story warehouse to find everything he thinks you said you need. When everybody agrees that this is the right stuff, he punches it all into a computer terminal and sends you to another guy who gives you a ticket. You take the ticket to the cashier and pay, and finally you take your receipt back to the guy who gave you the ticket to pick up your bag of items. After all that,  you remember that you also needed dulicate house keys so you start the entire process all over again. Meanwhile, lots of other gringos come and go, but they belong to the I-was-here-before-you gang, so they do not allow themselves to greet you or make eye contact or even smile.

After all that walking and standing around at Don Pedro, you take a taxi back up the hill, and after spending less than two minutes on the ladder, voila! you have a new bedroom "door".

Hey! How about that color scheme?

Early morning with projected sketch.

Relaxation is part of the Process...

NE Corner of Studio

North-East, corner of the studio space.

The "Easel"

SW Corner of studio

The South wall is filled with natural light from a very tall window on the west side (facing downhill to Guadiana and the "Ancha").

Now it begins...

Blue house, corner Aldama Pr. and Xichu in Ojo de Agua

Here I am at last...half a year or so since I started looking for a house with a studio or studios in San Miguel de Allende.