time just keeps flying. why is it the older we get, time seems to move so much faster? i guess it’s because we’re more aware of the eventual end of our own personal timeclock, even though we don’t know exactly when that will be. we do know that there’s less time left on the clock than we’ve already experienced. and i don’t know about you, but that weighs on me every single day.

sigh. well here we are in mid september. i’ve survived yet another hurricane hitting new orleans, francine. it was really quite a minor hurricane, a cat 2 only momentarily so mostly a cat 1. and the whole southern side of the storm on the other side of the eye wall had no rain, just crazy winds. but those winds were enough to make my power go out at my house at 11:30pm on the night after most of the storm had passed, and the power stayed off for exactly 36 hours. long enough to melt all the ice i’d frozen beforehand in the freezer to help keep it cool; long enough to require me to spend $25 on ice trying to keep the freezer going and to fill up a cooler with the stuff from the fridge; long enough for all that ice to start melting and some of my food to go off, resulting in me getting really sick after eating a frozen pizza that had meat on it which i thought had remained frozen, but i guess not. yeah, that was no fun. i really hate throwing up! so now i’ve thrown out all the stuff that was perishable from my fridge and freezer cuz i don’t want to have that experience ever again. it was very unpleasant. and expensive, as i’d *just* done a $150 costco run the weekend before. oh well.

anyways, i thought i’d be happy to have a few days off work (wednesday, the day of the storm, and thursday, the cleanup day after when many still didn’t have power, including me) and that i’d get some painting done, but that didn’t happen. turns out sitting in my unairconditioned studio, even though the temps outside were pretty bearable, isn’t very motivating.

i never finished that last series of mixed media paintings i talked about in the last post. they’ve gone to the not-done pile that is almost overtaking my tiny studio space. but i started a new series, covering up 4 older 16” x 20” canvases that weren’t going anywhere. i decided to let the thing that’s been exciting and motivating me the past few months – politics – inspire me in the studio. last week before the storm i rather spur of the moment had some play time in my art journal – something i haven’t done in a really long time. what i came up with was a sort of deconstructed american flag.

i really hate the color combo of red, white and blue. i’ve always thought it quite garish. and i’ve recoiled from patriotism in any form since a child. i hated having to say the pledge of allegiance and often did not, even in elementary school. something about being forced to do so never sat right with me. so the democrats’ current effort to “reclaim” patriotism doesn’t really work for me, even though i have let myself get a bit swept up in the vibes of kamala’s campaign. but flag waving patriotism is not something i can get excited about. however i did decide that using the colors of red, white and blue and playing with the elements of the flag while adding one of the themes of kamala’s presidential campaign, “freedom,” might be a good art challenge.

i ended up really liking how it turned out and so thought, well, i have all these ugly canvases sitting around just waiting to be covered up – why not try to do a series of actual paintings based on this same concept? the thing that started it all was that i (re)discovered a bunch of protest signs i’d printed out on heavyweight paper in 2016 for various street demos against trump’s “winning” of the election that year. one of them said “democracy is dying, do something.” so i tore off the “do something” part, thinking of michelle obama’s dnc speech this year, and glued it down with gloss medium onto one of the canvases that i’d painted blue. and then i added some stripes, though i ended up not liking the original fatter stripes and went back and made skinnier, messier ones like i did in my art journal, which i’m still not super happy with but it’s closer to working. and i started adding all kinds and sizes of stars with the eventual goal of having 50 or maybe even 56 to include the territories.

i’ve added more since i took this picture but it gives you an idea of where i’m at with these. there are 4 canvases and the others use other slogans from the current presidential campaign like “hope is making a comeback,” “a new way forward,” and “joy.” but “do something” is the furthest along as it was the first i started and feels like it has the most energy to me.

i’m not really sure where any of these are going or if i’ll even finish them but it’s been a fun challenge to wrap my brain around. i spent some time this weekend creating my own collage papers with paint and then cutting out various sizes of stars to collage in on these canvases. i think that is working but i feel like the paint/background needs more layers so some will likely get covered up and i’ll have to make more. the composition is lacking something – maybe just some really big stars, not sure – but i keep playing with these whenever i have a little time.

(i still think red, white and blue is awful but it’s made a little less garish by layering and scraping several different shades of blue with grays and whites and creams for a more distressed look. these canvases have a lot of texture on them from underlying layers since they are cover-ups so that is helping.)

what else? i’m still in the art2life academy but haven’t really utilized much of its resources beyond the facebook group. not sure i should stay in it but every time i think about quitting i find some videos in the vault that i want to watch, so i don’t. nick sure is good at marketing! lol

louise fletcher’s free find your joy taster course came and went. i signed up for it just so i could get the emails with the video links and i watched some of them while painting but didn’t actively engage with her prompts. and had no interest in going through FYJ the full course a second time, despite the deep discount for alums. my year-long access to FYJ 2023 ends today so i spent some time last night downloading all the pdfs and copy/pasting some of the lesson info so i’d have a record of it if i ever want to go back to it. i like louise and will keep following her on youtube and her podcast art juice plus i get her newsletter but i don’t think i’ll be taking any more of her courses.

nick also had his free taster course breadcrumbs which i also signed up for but didn’t really engage with other than to listen in on some of the videos of live events. his free taster is the lead-up to the paid spark program which i did in 2022 and enjoyed but i have no interest in doing that again, especially when i still have access to all the CVP material that i really need to go back over again.

i have a stupid busy work week this week so not sure i’ll have much time in the studio. it’s always the challenge – how to make time to paint when what i do for a living is get paid to give my time to other peoples’ pets. i racked up a $750 emergency room bill from the fall i took in my backyard in july so i need to work as much as i can to make the money to pay that off, but it leaves me sad and pining for my studio time.

it being september i am already thinking about how to use the holiday shopping time as a way to sell some paintings but at the same time don’t feel like i have a lot i’m proud of and wanting to sell. last year’s “open studio” was fun and made me a little bit of cash but my house really isn’t set up for it and i don’t have the energy or the setup/supplies to do an art market, so not sure how i will do it. maybe some kind of online sale/drop is the best option for me. we’ll see.

that’s all for now. thanks for reading. i’ll write again when i feel like i have something to say.