Well well well, here I am again, a year later, building a new studio and beginning the process of thinking in terms of painting for the first time in quite a while. At least thinking of painting consciously as I can’t help but see the world in terms that refer back to the way in which I put together images.

After living in the country for a couple of years, my family realised we were about to get into the gals teenage years and that staying where we were would involve much more chauferring than I wanted to think about and that life would be easier and better for us if we were back in town, so as is our custom we dove in and sold the place and bought another in the span of about three weeks, getting the deal done two weeks before the shit hit the fan in the rarefied realm of high finance. By which I mean the ponzi scheme we call capitalism. And after renting a studio from a slumlord who wouldn’t fix the electrical system that crashed the first time I plugged in the heaters I came to the conclusion that I’d have to build myself a studio in our backyard.

Which is what I’d planned to do until things got put on hold in late May when I had a couple of mild heart attacks. So here I am trying to get the job done before the snow begins to fall. The walls go up tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be drywalling late next week, which means drawing and painting by early November.

The time away from the studio has been refreshing in some ways, frustrating in others, but I can’t help but think I needed the time off just to back away and see my idea of what I’m doing in the studio change. Less self-imposed pressure to make “product”  and more emphasis on letting myself enjoy the process . More fun in the approach and less worry about selling and getting into bigger galleries.

And it’d be nice to have a period of time with no drama, especially of the medical sort, to just dig in and see what happens.

I’ll let you know when the studio is ready.

Now that I’ve had a chance to put myself at a remove from the studio for a few weeks and to sort through a few other issues in my thinking, I’m beginning to think that I may have to reconsider my previous avowal that I’m done with painting. That being said, my approach and intent will change.

No more concern with exhibiting and selling, back to the basic concerns of observation and interpretation…and into a simpler manner of apprehending the bits of reality that go into the work. More intuition without sacrificing intellect.

I realise that in the post cancer resumption of my life I’ve been trying to mash together the disparate elements that have been swirling through my consciousness and in the process I’ve been putting undo pressure on myself to make up for lost time rather than using the experience and insight to make for a new way of approaching the act of painting and being. Time to slow down and come to grips with this newer version of who I’m becoming and let it inform my work, rather than the other way around.

As Gabriella said, whether or not I continue to paint I’ll always see the world as a painter. And as Cezanne did in the last decades of his life, I’m going to remove myself from the concerns of the “art world” in order to concentrate on making art, in my own time and on my own terms. Without regard for anything other than the dogged pursuit of getting to the heart of the matter, avoiding convention and cliche without venturing into parody or disdain.

And not giving a flying fuck at the moon about what anybody thinks about any of it.

I’ll also probably do more writing, some political–seeing as we’re in such a state of disrepair as a culture–and some with regard to the nature of creative processes. I think the writing will help me to explore the act of painting on an intellectual plane so that I can dispense with that part of my thinking in the studio and get on with what it is I’m trying to do with the medium itself. Plus having a forum for the odd rant will provide me with an opportunity to have a bit of fun.

So yeah, I guess I’m back in the saddle again, but in a new saddle of my own making.