"Here, Hearing Her Dance"

Cut and pasted away. Worked on image beyond this but this seems to be good - focused and not distracted. Less is more, more or less.

Done on a day on pain killers. Back to work today. Life is a poker game, no?

"Conquer Fear"

Switch Hitting

Black and white and then edited with Corel Draw and some Paint. Need Corel training. I am as lost there as I am when young and truly infatuated. Infatuation. Yes. Cross-eyed and hopeless. Yet, yet, yet. Maybe all wet.

Listening to my iPod, typing U2 typos - "with or without you...."

Sometimes I want to give myself away.

Broken Rib

Two x-rays prove it and the Vicodine prescription confirms it. One cracked rib and two weeks of numb chest pain - worse when trying to sleep. Most important thing to do is breathe deep since shallow breathing to avoid pain may lead to pneumonia.

Well here is a cracked rib pain killed "painting" entitled "X-Ray, Hooray and the West Side."

Corel Draw, Falls, and Sophie

Got new program and I am lost in the woods. Adapted contrast and sharpened a bit - here are two versions - with Paint and now Corel Draw.



Bummer today - went for a walk and tripped over my own shoe lace - fell head first and scuffed up both hands, ruined by watch band and tore my red jacket. Landed on my iPod, as I did two years ago (broken rib then, but more painful then), and a rib is sore - I hope not broken. Took pain killer. Nice buzz - all else about it sucks. Guess lucky iPod did not break - was listening to John Mayer's "Your Body Is A Wonderland."

Snowing in NY tonight.

Speaking of iPods and falling - I have fallen in momentary love with Sophie B. Hawkins - go to http://www.sophiebhawkins.com/

Only Love (The ballad of sleeping beauty)

You don't know why I'm crazy
I don't know why you're blue
You messed with my head
You messed with the dead
Now I'm gonna mess with you
I don't know why you're lazy
I'm so in love with you
What's God gonna see
Who's God gonna know
When's God gonna help us through
I can't deny I can't explain I can't reply
I can't refrain
I want his hands I want his chest I want his feet
I want his sex
I am the child I am the whore I am the wild woman
at your door
I need to touch I need to talk I need to love I need to
give you you up

What am I fighting for
If I win I lose my life
I need you more and more to
break my will tonight

Only love can set us free
Only love can bear the truth
Only love can bring us peace
Only love can save me and you

Oh daddy what I've been thinking
Only heaven knows
What's Ma gonna see who's Ma gonna blame
When's Mama gonna carry you home

I have the urge I have the mind
I have the touch I drank the wine
I want the loss I want the pain I want to start my life again
I can't define I can't forget I can't explain the feeling of regret
I know the dead I'm not alone I made my bed
I want to let you you go

What am I frightened for
If I speak I lose my mind
You've broken down the door and there is no place to hide

Only love can set us free
Only love can bear the truth
Only love can bring us peace
Only love can save me and you
Only love can purify
Only love can conquer fear
Only love can testify
Only love can make a miracle of life

Sucker for love songs. More so each day.

Done

Minor edits to allow better view of robe on bottom left. Less distracting.

Ear Rings or Bass Plug? Robins and North Face Beauty

Yesterday I took my eleven year old son for a haircut. Since his hair is longer, we take him to a salon with mostly women patrons. While I waited a woman, thirty five and clearly neuve riche came in with bratty son and gangly six year old daughter. Both kids had thick eye glasses so dad must be a blind stock broker.

I sat next to the doting mother. As I listened to love songs on my iPod, the woman took like eight hair clips out of the poor young girl's hair. I was inches from the woman's left ear which had six rings starting at the top of her ear and three more diamond studs near the lobe. I kept counting the rings over and over again because I have mild case of numerical dyslexia. She was so self involved she never even noticed my staring at her ear.

She may have thought she was stunning, but her ear one one fish hook shy of a bass plug - a lure used to temp trophy fish into biting.

More is not better. It is excess. Bass plugs are lures - they are not real. Yuk.

Let me gaze, transfixed, at real clear beauty anytime. Inside and out. Something rarer than quintuplets, honestly. North Face of Everest perfect.

BTW, I saw an American Robin on my front lawn today. Cold and bitter morning, but Spring will come. It was a female. Young, clean and so healthy.

Updated Variation

Currently I am painting birds on canvas and it might take a week for a 5 by 7 inch painting. Microsoft Paint is so much faster and has "undo" and "save as" options.

Here is an update pic from below, blast from the past, in more than one way.

Needs more pink or something - here is an earlier version, again unfinished..."saved as"...



And here is what I like, for now (click on image to see larger version):

"Gazing Cross-eyed, Never Blind"

Just realized that if you click on any image you can see it larger - very important.

A revelation not unlike when someone special enters a room and all din quiets as the all senses become focused.

"Yet"

At this time attempting not to rely on spray paint technique from Microsoft Paint. A friend provided Corel Draw software and I am excited about it's potential, but admire the simplicity (crudeness, primitiveness) of Paint.

Not very slick am I said Sam, thanking Dr. Seuss.

Past, Present, Perfect

I am not sure of this image - work in progress. Past and present and perfect. Yes, yes, yes. Inspired.

Ghosts, visions, and crushes

Last Friday I went back to MOMA and spent time in the Abstract Expressionist wing - lovely to be back with Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell, Richard Diebenkorn, Stella, and on through some Pop artists. Warhol is over rated.

What amazed me is in my art lapse how many great 1950s painters I admired died. Their paintings remain - hung and sublime, but the themselves are ghosts. Maybe they will come to me in my dreams - for example, the Ghost of Art Past.



I seek inspiration. It is everywhere but some places more constant and glowing like the first ember. Think of the caveman who discovered he could create fire and you will understand the awe I sometimes feel.

I need to express it more clearly, but the way I see sometimes - I see through phot lenses and I fall in love with visual perfection. My perfection, my interpretation, but something close and secret and somehow divine. Crush city, not surf city. Wipe out, nonetheless.

I once had the biggest crush and then one day it just went away - I was so relieved. My mind is funny that way. Nothing caused it either. Sort of like my mind got washed while I was asleep.

Here is to inspiration and being awoken cold by a perfect ghost. Past and present perfect.

Time Frozen

A temporary respite. Like a watch with a dead battery, but much more elegant, earthly yet free floating.


To sit in bright white light and accept my soft heart and experience, briefly, what I crave more than anything.



Then prepare and anticipate the next half life production - five to seven days away, if lucky. Frozen yet fully receptive yet nervous.

Updated and finished, me thinks

I got back canvas blow up of first print - liked it but room for improvement - possibly a bit too busy in one sector (less visible up close on flat computer screen). Need to understand final medium and not just how appears in the preliminary process. More focus on negative space and not be cuirtailed by shortcomings of original image. Learning - anything else would by folly.

One learns more from mistakes (even minor ones) - if observant - than from all the things that float by done right.

"Somehow, Always" is below - close to being finished.

"No Wand Required"

Sometimes one sees so so so lucidly - quickly or, more rarely, in sublime slow motion.

Sometimes no extra magic is required, nor warranted. Life then does not need to be stirred or shaken.

For these moments we pray hope and dream and envision. I crave these dreams among bright true stars. They can guide you and inspire you.

Life - Like A Sheet of Ice

Some tremble, some freeze, some slip and some glide. Effortlessly.

Here is to truth, and to kindness.

Mascara Surfing

Today I was riding to work on E train and saw something amazing. A woman - five foot two, trim, well dressed - got on at 50th Street (my favorite subway stop) and she stood by a door - not holding on - and started putting powder on her face. The subway moved and swayed, jerked etc and she kept perfect balance while concentrating on her face in the make up mirror.

Next she put on dark red lipstick perfectly as I could tell from ten feet away. All the while the car was moving and jerking and swaying - incredible feat requiring the steadiest of hands and balance.

Next she used a mascara pencil to do her eyes - not brows but eye liner. I was amazed. She did one eye and got off with me on 5th Avenue. She went to Madison side and I to the the 5th Ave exit.

Memorable.

The Crane Wife, Modern Art and Shopping

Today riding in on Long Island Railroad I listened to an album (CD) by the The Decemberists and I consider it one of the best records in a long time - the entire band plays with full conviction and authority. It is art. I was speechless riding in on a cold dreary morn.

My favorite song is "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)" - yes, a very sad love song (I am a sucker for sad love songs and those chanting of unrequited lust) - but there entire CD is breathtakingly beautiful, yet at times challenging. Remarkable. The tone overall is dark and chilling.

At lunchtime I wondered into the Museum of Folk Art in mid town Manhattan and in the gift shop there was a 33 1/3 RPM vinyl record molded into a bowl. The album was Billy Joel so I will wait to see what other records they get in. Maybe the Clash or Beatles. I love CDs but miss I miss records - even the cracks pops and hisses. There was also something to be said for two sides - two compositions - you had to turn the record over. Each side had an end.

I much prefer the iPod to any cassettes of music I made in the past. My first iPod broke and I cannot bear to throw it out. 20 gigs and broken. I cannot see discarding it. So I do embrace technology - the word is part of my job title, and I also tinker here and with my techno quasi art.

I work across the street from MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) and will start going there regularly. Free admission due to corporate sponsorship. Been to the Photography wing already and to the gift shops. I love museum gift shops. Books, items and the women shopping there sometimes are left of center and poised artistically, always something that I find alluring.

Words (confessions) Added

Questions and confessions some obscured - others simply visible like the tiny thank you's that should ring true. Invisible here, though. Shrinkage due to the cold water.

"Only Fitting"

I upgraded the image in part to strengthen composition and to add important element - the portraitsof one of the principal dancers in a 42nd Street production. The size of image here is still too small since much of compositon is fused by small details. Oh well.

When is a painting finished? Is this a painting - cyber painting sort of like cyber sex?

I am using Microsoft Paint to keep it simple and not at all slick. The software is rather limiting.

When is it Finished? Is it Good? Am I Good?

Here is a jpg at various stages of manipulations - the rendition of the final - the third one down- is too small and details are lost. Here and now, tonight within this blog import, the manipulated image does not seem to have an adequately strong composition.

Something to think about? Too busy? Too small?

Yes, after inspecting the larger image in My Documents the rendition here is too small yet I stand by it - the composition is delicate and held together in part by words and phrases and fragments of confessions that are lost here. It is valid work - just not so as depicted here. Size matters.

So you will have to take my word for it until I can determine way to link to a larger image, somehow. Trust me.

Yes. Trust me.







"42nd Steps and Forty Nine Confessions"

Painting on Photographs - Oggling After Googling

A few years ago I did an exhibit of 11 by 17 black and white prints that I painted on with soft pastels. They were photos of posters atop posters atop posters in the East Village at a time when the neighborhood was on the cusp of gentrification. When the streets still was rogue vitality. When new small shows and performances occurred nightly near by.

Small posters were covered over and replaced by newer posters and others were ripped by vandals or patriots. My analogy was that the current tenants of the East Village - those with marginal income - would be replaced by those more affluent desiring an urban chic environment sans criminal element. And family of five or seven would no longer live in a studio apartment.

The posting of the ephemeral billboards was itself a minor crime...probably much more frowned on today. Today when both CBGB and Tower Records are gone.

iGreed and iTunes and iIncorporated.

But, there is still art....maybe.



To some small extent the Internet for me is the new East Village. There is crud and there is art and there is beauty among the porno rats and the barb wired pop up ads. And sometimes a search reveals a small buried treasure. And then you can be happier as you gaze at pearls and at Manet like grace.

I am attaching a jpg pic I have modified - played with to an extent as prepare the potential backbone for further manipulation - once printed and then obscured and possibly glorified by mixed media. Who knows.

As of now the pic is untitled. But it is inspiring.

art

lower case art inspired by lower case sentences that i cannot delete from mind or hard drive. so so far from spam and every inference subject to interpretation and reinterpretation. a slow motion hobby.

here is to art and to true beauty and to any ten minutes when I sip coffee or stare and dream. here is to waking up and accepting options or, better, creating them. so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so many thanks to all things and people that will inspire me. inspired and slightly hopeful. painting again. seeing again.

a picture off the internet manipulated with microsoft paint - a simple program. still, more important, a simply elegant subject. much more depth there on the splendid skin and miraculous soul than my technique can celebrate or exalt. i may not know her but she seems to be a perfect subject. someone found on the internet - not found really. all i found was a website by accident and now am doing a little yahoo research.