The wheels keep on grinding...

   Once, many years ago, I got stoned.  I liked  the mellow and the munchies of the sixties.  This was the nineties and pot had intensified.  I felt like the inside of my body was rotating in one direction, while the outside of my body was rotating in another.
   I bring this up because I am having a similar reaction but without the grass.  Stasis on the outside, turmoil on the inside.  I'm not painting at home, or stretching canvases or in any fashion, productive.  My mind is whirling with ideas but there is a short-circuit.  I am taking a seminar with Carol Dupre, "Potential Space and the Found".  I knew I was in trouble when I didn't understand the class description. ( Do you know what a vulgate is?)  Carol is a brilliant painter and she has spurred many an artist to make the leap.  I wasn't in the mood to leap, but I figured it couldn't hurt to look over the edge.
    Apparently, it has disconnected my intent from my action.  It is supposed to be a painting class, but so far we haven't touched paint.  I don't even bother bringing paint to class.  We've made clay heads, looked at death masks, read "By Night in Chile" by Roberto Bolano.  (Excellent book about Pinochet's reign, but it is one paragraph, 118 pages long.)  We've seen and dissected the movie, "Perfume: the history of a murderer."  Lovely, twisted images to fire the synapses.  "Pan's Labyrinth" is next.  Last week we read about paradigm shifts in science.  I love what I have learned from this, but it seems to have immobilized me.

Ask me no questions...

                        "Canoodling" 22" x 40"

I was asked by the Art League's blogmaster to answer some questions about my blog.  Oddly, I haven't blogged since I responded to him.  So, in lieu of a blog,  here are my answers, the italized words refer to his questions)
    I began blogging because Dawn Benedetto insisted that a modern artist must go viral.  Apparently, websites are not enough.  I joined Facebook for the same reason.  I draw the line at Twitter, believing it to be an offense to language.  I don't text for the same reason.
   My blog is not a true artist blog.  I don't discuss techniques or analagous color schemes. If someone asks, I would be happy to tell them.  But no one has. The Blogger 'leave a comment' section is difficult to use.  Artist block comes up now and again, but I am more likely to grouse about tenants of our summer house or my son's dog.  I try to be droll.
   Do I like Blogger. No.   Blogger appropriates your images as their own, with the feeble warning 'Images may be subject to copyright.'  May?#?!?  It is open season for pirates.  (I say this as one whose images were hijacked and displayed the walls of a fish restaurant in Singapore.  A woman from Hong Kong recognized my work from International Artist Magazine and sent me cellphone images.)
   I have never sold a painting from my blog.  I don't know who reads it, though apparently I am big in Russia, Pakistan and Malawi.  The few members of my family who read it,  do so sporadically.
   The benefits of blogging are purely selfish.  I used to write novels and food books.  When I discovered pastels, I stopped writing immediately.  (That and the lack of  hue and cry from the publishing world.)  Later when I had to write about my painting I found it incredibly difficult.  Writing is a different 'muscle' than painting.  After 20 years of apparent ease, I had to work at it.  So blogging helps  keep the muscle toned.  I enjoy the process.
   I try to blog at least twice a month.  I am up to 101 posts.  During my solo art league show, Erica Fortwengler, the publicity director, insisted that I blog everyday. It was a nightmare.