Grab and GO!

I continue to grab what's at hand and then just GO!

Today I grab the 1927 Funk & Wagnalls Practical Standard Dictionary originally owned by Mrs. Carr Brackett of Monhegan Island, much later available for the taking at some kind of help-yourself clearing out of books somewhere on the island (perhaps set on a table in front of Monhegan's L. Brackett & Son grocery?), picked up by artist Judy Caldwell, and generously given to me by Judy when we painted together one summer morning.

I tear out a page, grab my Sharpie chisel-tip marker, and I'm off and running. I have a loose 'plan,' a plan that has an intended end 'product' and an intention to go where the painting takes me in the making.

grab-and-go work in progress

On My Nightstand, on My Easel (8)

On my nightstand

Think of a ballet dancer
at the barre.
Plié, 
elevé, 
battement tendu.
She is practicing,
because she knows
that there is no difference
between practice and art.
The practice
is
the art.

Dani Shapiro, Still Writing


On my easel

detail with dictionary collage
work in progress, 18 days in, 5/6/20
24 x 48" canvas

Intrepid

Here's what sculptor Henry Moore asserted when asked in an interview by writer Donald Hall, "What is the secret of life?"

The secret of life
is to have a task,
something you devote
your entire life to,
something you bring
everything to,
every minute of the day
for your whole life.
And the most important
thing is—
it must be
something
you cannot possibly do.


That is where I find myself: devoted to something I cannot possibly do, paintbrush in hand, pulled to reach for an ineffable something which I am not even able to name.

I feel intrepid at the moment, newly determined to push through my own kicking and screaming to become less fussy and deliberate, more experimental, more willing to walk with awkward, more able to tolerate that which is unpleasing to my eye.

Funk & Wagnalls Walk the Field Beside the Cottage
6 x 6"; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, graphite crayon, and collage on gessobord
abstract
2019

---
A partial history of this painting:

Singing at Singing, 2015

6 days ago

6 days ago

5 days ago

today!

Movement

Start.

Stop.

Turn upside down.

Done.

Stay in motion—on to another.

Groundless Theory
3.5 x 5" postcard; acrylic, pastel, and collage on card stock
abstract
2019