From Studio Notes, February 2006

◄  #1, February 2006 
February 3, 2006. Oakland.
Late afternoon.
Compare the western sky this afternoon
with the western sky in 1955-56.

In the late 1950's we lived in a large, elaborate and ruinous old house on Harrison Street, only two blocks from Monte Vista (“Green Gates”) where I live now. The climax of our Harrison Street roof line was a turret with columns surrounding an open lookout. One afternoon while standing in the turret and looking out west across San Francisco Bay, I made five or six paintings of the sky, each painting held at the bottom with the triangle of a sail on its way to the horizon. The sky that day was strung with moving cirrus, and I was 29 and in the opening of my career.

This afternoon fifty years later, an espresso with my dog on the Green Gates front porch and looking out and down through the balustrade, down across the terraces, lawns and the fountain with the trees rising beyond, and above it all the sky smeared with cirrus and the glare of the sun. I am 78 and in the closing of my career, and my painting now this half a century later is--?

While looking at my dog a few minutes later, I wrote in my studio notes, “Well, kid, Daddy's got to get to work. Trouble is, Daddy doesn't know how to do it.”

A couple minutes later, though, I realized I didn't know how to do it fifty years ago either. However, there is a difference then and now. The career path upward and outward across the world is clearly marked for youth (although maybe you won't make it, at least there's general agreement about how to try). But the career path for age? Mumbling, fumbling, stumbling and crabby? Is that it?

Begin work on # 1, February 2006.
"It’s coming."

*

February 7 2006. Oakland.
Night.
“What is, what is the message in the clouds?”
Became simply “What is the message?”

Late night.
As for the earlier question about message, well, the answer is, “This is the message.”
Us artist-types have our troubles when what they want is not what we've got.
And of this painting, don't ask me what it means, I did not make it up.

February 8, 2006. Oakland.
Very early morning.
It’s a portrait of “I am the guilty sinner who in atonement
built all this world of which in truth I am proud.”

Late afternoon.
Cyclops is not very attractive. Even punch out his eye, he is what he is.

Night.
And, yes, this painting's mean. Everything about it is mean. I can hear the screaming.