The interesting thing about the last few enteries is how the random photo images seem to influence the next days painting… like the wilting flower and the tattered American Graduate Smiley face forced a rework of the beer drinker into a semi platable sad story portait. Other than this I’m watching the Dylan thing on PBS. Every morning I feel like quitting painting and then I paint. Why is it that I love the act of painting but can’t stand making paintings… or even really the idea of paintings?

On the way to the studio I saw this tear of color in the subway sign. I immediately saw a figure in it and on closer inspection, I read the word “Create”. So I followed the orders and drew in the eyes and nose. A colaboration with an unknown colleague. It may have lead to me painting on the reverse of some beat up canvases.

Been busy working on some large paintings. The above is the end of some American party and I was trying to cop some of the styles of the Ab Ex moment, when the counry came to dominance, to look at it going off the rails. The one below takes up a whole wall of the studio and is made out of three panels of canvas stretched on the wall. It has something to do with gluttony and all the people it takes to feed the glutton and make the beds and set the table, etc. I was working on the separte panels when suddenly they all seemed to talk together.

After lunch, I pass the muslim school on fourth avenue. You see the kids out waiting and the girls in their head gear. Around the corner, a woman appeared in a vision of total black burqa. It was visually arresting in the brick wide open sky. She had only a postal slot to peer out of. Even her hands were hidden in velveteen black gloves and she looked a little like the yin to the KKK yang… or a witch. I was thinking about how maybe the European fairy tale image of a witch might be based on crusaders seeing women in burqa, or is it that muslim men put women in burqas from the same fear of women that led led to burning them as witches? Then again, wasn’t a lot of that witch burning going on in Spain (where there certainly were plenty of muslims) and so maybe burning witches is a sort of euphemism for burning muslim women? A string of thoughts ran through my head as she adjusted the burqa in the humid breeze and you could see her hands moving black against the concrete background and I think I’ve never looked at anyones hands this way….. following them the way you would a face and she was off down the street looking like a punctuation mark in the landscape. An exclamation point at first and then a question mark as I crossed the street towards the draw bridge.

I awoke in the white gray morning to the sound of the dog’s breathing. I’d been in an elaborate dream where I was walking some back woods campus with President Clinton. We were looking for someone, or some event and having a convivial conversation. He seemed like a nice guy. I was going on and on about how the grid woven into a canvas must have had an influence on our very way of seeing and or recording that sight…. or is it that our way of seeing and knowing is somehow dependant on the grid and all moderin painting is the act of rediscovering the grid because it is just rediscovering the canvas and the streatcher… I was prattling on and Clinton did a good job pretending to be interested. Later, I found things in the street that seemed to echo the morning: a toy car trailer that seemed to be a sculpture of me dreaming, a link from a watch band like a moment taken out of time, and a small piece of graph paper.

In an ideal world, I’d like to be making great hunks of paint and painting like the above head which is all thick and juicy and filled with pallette scrapings and paint. This kind of approach with diners might catch the visceral quality of food and drink and conversation that I am after. As it is I’ve only made a couple of heads and these somewhat dainty sketches…. which are only fun when animated. Confusion and idiocy and poverty.

I’ve run out of white paint and canvas, but a studio neighbor threw me some trimmings from beautiful primed Belgian Linen. I knocked up these bizarre figures today carving the paint away with rags, exposing the white priming below. It’s an old glazing technique I haven’t used in a while. Let’s you show off the grain of the linen I guess. I have enough to knock up three more I think.

The talk was of Hobbes on the Radio and it got me thinking about those old illustrations of The Leviathan and so I painted this flirty, half blind, coward over an old crowd painting. Strange. Then I did some ink on vellum traces of paintings and voila: Clark comes after Willoughby. Maybe this is what Willoughby ought to be drawn on instead of little pages (These are fairly large panels of paper). I bet video would look great projected on or through vellum. Naturally I get all these great ideas as I run out of materials and money. Typical bullshit.

I’ve been thinking about the word “Gulf” lately: Persian, of Mexico, rich and poor, private and public, white and black… I’ve been thinking about the word: “GULF”. I googled it and noticed that the logo for Gulf Oil actually seems to have expanded and grown wider or fatter over time. It sort of figures.

Feels like coffin nails banging into my head. I’ve got a petroleum distillate solvent headache, but I like this portrait. I may be thinking about America in doom and gloom forbodings and prism slick floods, but I like this portrait.

Perhaps it’s misguided to blame “the head of state”, but something tells me the Louisianna and Mississippi National Guards aren’t where they should be. Things just keep going from bad to worse. I wonder how we’ll look back on these years, if we get the chance? Still, I liked the portrait and the banging music of the long telephone pole pile driving into the soft muddy earth near the canal (I guess a way of shoring up a new foundation for something too tall like every new building in this soupy canal valley)… it will be the new jazz… pile driving jazz….. Do you know what it means to miss faith in the “New” (Orleans/world/York)? Saints start marching in…. and it makes a nice soundtrack for a sinking feeling below. Bang your head…. maybe the wall will give…. some day.

Today the Carrol Street draw bridge was open, so of course I went back into the draw bridge painting… listening to NPR on New Orleans in utter disbelief. The sign said, “BRI[evolve] shine please - I’m hesitant - be brave” and my favorite da daist phrase: “Cat Food”. On the way home there was a box with pink hands and a linen background to shoot them on. This among many things makes my life seem filled with corney symbolism… It’s too hard to explain and you wouldn’t buy it in a shitty little novel anyways. Bells and Whistles.