I took a day off on Saturday, slept in. Aside from that i've become happily in the habit of rising with the sun of late. It's as if my caffeine intake is so high, that I get rollover into the next day, which by the measure of work I have to tackle, I am thoroughly into. There's a 'super moon' tonight, which means that I"m a little more batshit than usual, and I have not been especially great at communicating with others- that is, my balance- I've been talking too much. Here too, I'm pouring out (pouring in), and it may be against my best interests, in some convoluted way, but I am full of thoughts, truly overflowing. I read The Sorrows of Young Werther the yesterday, and the day before- had a good time with it, blowing through it, and with exception of looking up word I was unclear on, read quite lean. I learned the word terse, and it's synonym laconic- this from a whack google search about the sculpture Laocoon and His Sons. I did a great sketch of a version of this sculpture at the Ringling Museum the other day, when my painting class went for a drawing field-trip. MY paintings have been coming out relatively well this semester, I have made breakthroughs at nearly every turn. It feels so exciting to experiment! Today I made some fun works in gouache of a model in an Eastern getup, outdoors- this from a figure drawing and painting group that I am the president of at the Ringling College. In short, I took this club ( a Ringling tradition, dating twenty plus years) which had gone bankrupt, and picked it up by its bootstraps. I sold a bunch of memberships, that we can use to pay models, and now we're up to fifteen hours (extracurricular drawing time) per week. Today was my baby session, the Sunday six-hour. This session always gets me in a frenzied state- because I have so much homework to do, yet commit to monitoring the club from 9am to 4pm (with a lunch break). I get all worked up, and think about where else I could be, and what else I 'should' be doing, and I get all panicky and bitter. It's kind of like what happens sometimes when I try to meditate. So by the time its done in the afternoon, I take a bit of time to organize some of my thoughts and things, and prepare for the week ahead, and eat some food, (it's going to be a long night/week) and rocket out into the working night. Here I am in the middle of it too. I'll get back to the studio now. I'm working on a big painting. I've won over my painting teacher, so I'm thinking to please her with a banger piece. Something that I will love painting. I am very excited for this painting. I've built a support and stretched a canvas for it, and am in the process of grinding out a thumbnail onto its gessoed surface now too. I love the grinding up, though I thought it might be terrible, I like it.. Also, the sketch is really inaccurate, but so good. I love the sketch, so I am going to do that terrible thing where I just try to do the thumbnail, but bigger. Thing is, I feel as though I can see the whole painting in my mind, or at least see the completion of the painting. I've come so far, and have many ideas to problems I may encounter, and solutions I may employ, and experiments I might try- so the outcome is clear in a way that feels more like love and less like a gig. There's something inevitable about it. You can probably sense now how I mean when I say that I am intolerable to speak with currently, and yet they try, my friends and classmates have been approaching me a lot lately. Even my teachers have such pleasant things to say. I feel to leave many times. I sent an email to Cal arts, almost in a panic, on the basis that they were in LA. I have not been to LA, but thought that moving there would be a good thing to do. Something so different. I outgrew Tallahassee in that I was lauded so frequently, it felt like I should be somewhere else in a way. So I moved on. Now heaven forbid I king the school (in my mind). Let the praise not find me. May I not hear it. May I be perceived not as an end, that I may continue to grow. That's enough for now I say. Back to the studio.
PS. I ate food while reading Werther, contrary to my fasting during Faust. I did not wish to kill myself, or do much anything dramatic. I just read, and enjoyed the work. What a blessing that I not become fixed into a fantasy as sorrowful as Werther's. God, I get distracted, I can feel my heart pull like his too, daydreaming, and sorrowful. I digress, but there's a funny disconnect (perhaps the most sorrowful thing of all) that my focus has become manifest in that I am contented to myself, and my work. I am truly blessed.
Back to the studio
