Working Spring/Summer 2103

Since January of this year I have been working in my studio, painting panels and then adding  photographic elements to those panels.  The entire process is slow and tortuous, until it isn't, and then things  happen with such speed and clarity that I wonder if I'm in the same time continuum as the person who had been plodding so miserably along.   

Scraps of paper are everywhere, the left overs of  photographs I've been futilely cutting. I'll see one out of the corner of my eye, and the next thing I know, it will have given me the information I need to start a new image.  Shapes that were nothing suddenly make sense, and then, there I am, off to the races.

My studio has gotten progressively more cluttered and chaotic, not just from day to day, but from year to year.  Earlier pictures of my studio show a clean, open space.  Now every surface is full of heaps of paper, scissors and paper cutters, boxes with bits and pieces of photos, and stacks of painted panels.  The floor is littered with scraps of uncut paper--if I drop something I'm cutting, forget it, I'll never find it again.  I keep adding  more and more tables to the room, but I'll never have enough.  The shelves around the perimeter walls are stacked three deep with unfinished pieces, all waiting to be completed. 

Studio 

Piles of hands and arms, waiting to be fit into something.

The worst thing is that I have been doing just the "fun" part--if you want to call it that--of marrying of the images with the painted grounds.  I haven't wanted to bother with doing the unfun part, which is gluing the images to the surface and then putting on a final finish varnish.  It's tedious work which calls for a perfectionist's attention to detail, and which, if it goes wrong can be disastrous.  Like not paying attention and gluing something upside down.  It's the kind of work a really good assistant should be doing, but, unfortunately, that assistant is me.  By the end of my time gluing all these images(and there are alot)I will have a sore jaw and such a stiff neck that I will be forced to move my whole body to turn my head.  A sensible person would make a few, glue a few, then make a few more, and glue a few more, etc. etc.  But when you're your own boss, you get to work in any wacky, disfunctional way you want.