I’m Here! I’m Open! I’m Ready! I’m Excited!

Doing the dance before paint! It happens, it happens. It’s my way of calling in the Muses and saying, “Hey, I’m having a good time here. Thank you for giving me this creative urge. I don’t know how else to put it. I’m here, I’m open. I’m ready. I’m excited.”

This is how I often begin. And this time I really – Oh, I’m getting excited because I’m getting really close to finishing this painting. I think I’ll have a few more sessions to go and it will be done. It may take two or three more sessions (which means probably five more. But maybe not. It’s very close). It’s very close. What’s two sessions to five more sessions – just a few more days – when this painting began in 2004?

I could have left the painting as it was. When I left to live in Arizona 2006 / 2007 – I’m not even sure what year I moved out there – I left this painting in New York. It hung in my aunt’s home until 2021. When I returned, and I began living back here on the East Coast I said, “Nope, this one has to change.”

And I being reworking this painting in early 2022. When I first took it off the wall, it had what looked like coffee splashed on it, and it was discolored from 18 years of cigarette smoke. (That is another story entirely). I cleaned it up and painted another layer over it. In late 2022 I brought it with me to Brooklyn. While I had it in the city all I could do was look at it while I painted all kinds of other paintings – actually hundreds of other paintings. This painting just sat in the background, waiting for me to do the next thing.

It wasn’t until I came back to the Hudson Valley that I got the idea for this last part of the painting. I’m really enjoying finishing this. The final idea all kind of began with the Plum Doodles Project that I started around January 2024. The Plum Doodles are a response to John S. Hall’s 10,000 Poems Project. I’m doing 10,000 Plum Doodles. I’m calling them 10,000 Plums. This final layer was inspired by those tiny drawings.

This feels to me, this finale, like an embrace. I’m so grateful that it’s ending with an embrace.

Yes, it’s an embrace. After a journey of a lifetime, it ends as an embrace.

July 28, 2024
Hudson Valley, New York