Getting Bock, I Lost A Sock

Summer's back. I'm calling it The Summer After. The new title has to do with the painting process this canvas went through.

I finally jumped back in before meeting my neighbors at the annual picnic down by the lake. After reviving Summer, I went to say 'Hi' to the people I wave at yearlong driving by on my bike or in my car with telltale paint splotches decorating my hands and arms like tattoos. I flaunted my calling with pleasure. Told them about my blogging venture. And met the two year old twins, 'Sweetheart' and 'Gorgeous', the youngest occupants on this block of retirees. My paint session and the party was a gas, as Sammy would have said.

After a week nursing a headcold, it was great to get back to my acrylics and large canvases. --Not that I didn't enjoy painting the little paintings, I did. I do. I just get the biggest kick letting loose on larger surfaces. The broader strokes carried through with my whole body behind them make me feel alive--vital--energetic-- ecstatic. That action put to music beats aerobics. The Salvation Army could come get that elliptical monster out of my basement.

Minus a sock (from stepping into a flung glob of cobalt/titanium that missed its mark), I came closer to knowing what kind of painter I am. The painting isn't done quite yet--colors are missing, but it never will be. These free association abstractions, action paintings as they were sometimes called, are never finished. They are open ended. That's what makes them breath. It's taken me a long time to realize there's no final mark that ends the exchange. The emotion towards the subject, the stimulus, just stops, takes a breath and moves on to something else. If the artist looks back, she's just going to screw it up.