I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Sunday Planning, I plan for the week ahead.
Last week, I lived the road trip life. It culminated in a 14-hour drive on Friday in which, trying to route around a closure at Ratón Pass, we added 200 miles to the trip, not fully aware of what we were choosing and committing to. We drove over part of New Mexico’s Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway. It was absolutely gorgeous! And tediously slow, 30 miles per hour for much of that leg of the drive.
Yesterday was a recovery day. I unpacked, did laundry, talked to my daughter on the phone. It was also a creative re-entry day. I started three new paintings. I also published two 1000-day project blog posts along with one Reckless Daybook entry, Say Okay.
That Reckless Daybook entry was motivated by the 14-hour drive on Friday. At times during the slow and beautiful western drive through northern New Mexico, I didn’t want to accept our fate. We didn’t want to stay in the backed up traffic in Raton, waiting for the pass to open. The road sign suggested alternate routes. But the only alternate route we could figure out (using both Google Maps and Apple Maps) took us far out of our way. But that meant a much longer drive than what we thought we had chosen. “Dissatisfaction is the price of being alive,” I wrote in my daybook entry. Dissatisfaction, irritation, frustration comes with commitments, like our commitment to driving around Ratón Pass instead of waiting for it to open.
In my painting yesterday, I felt inspired by a painting I came across by Christopher Wool in The Art Newspaper. I won’t share the image here due to potential copyright violations. When I turned to my own canvases, what came out was nothing like Wool’s (except that I always use many layers, visible brushtrokes, veiling, and — I hope — interesting color palettes). Painting again made me feel energized and optimistic.
In the next couple weeks, I’d like to add my latest paintings to my website and perhaps make another stab at creating an art storefront on Saatchi Art. I could alternatively make a store right here on my website. I’ll need to consider what the best direction is.
Because many of my paintings use off-white backgrounds, I cracked open some old quart jars of off-white house paint from Sherwin Williams in colors like Alabaster (my favorite off-white), Greek Villa, Spare White, Snowbound, and Pure White. Instead of mixing my own off-whites I’m finding it easier to use these premixed paints for the backgrounds of white and the overlays that I often do. So many of my paintings suggest snowy ski landscapes. And if I use large canvases I need a lot of paint. So housepaint is a good solution.
That makes me think about midcentury painter Robert Ryman, best known for making all white paintings using a variety of kinds of paint — oil paint, acrylic, industrial, or latex. He used white to get everything else out of the way — color, symbolism, drama, subject — so he could pay attention to what happens when paint meets a surface. His paintings were about painting itself.
I still think of having subjects of my work but these subjects only emerge after the activity of painting, and the way that paint, brush, surface, and artist produce an unplanned, unfolding work of art. But I also think of them as simply painting as such, not representing anything at all beyond that.
When I’ve been starved of time to write and to paint it’s all I want to do. But I still have a life to run. I missed my monthly investment portfolio review last week so I need to do it today (or I could skip it for this month). I have phone calls to make to check in with family. The house could use a good cleaning. And so forth.
But all I really want to do this week is paint and write!