Thursday, January 25, 2007

I am Fine With Distractions

Boxes One, 8x10

Boxes Two, 8x10

As I mentioned the other day, I did actually squeeze some paint out on Monday and managed to get started on a few new things. There's no urgency, as I have no events coming up for several months so I must admit that doing any painting is pretty challenging for me right now. Perhaps that would be different if I hadn't worked last year to the point of burnout, but I did, so there you go. Painting was exhilarating and that stayed with me all day, but I have also had no problem allowing the rest of my life interfere with getting back to the work again.

Tuesday afternoon, Doug and I decided, at the last minute to go to Dreamgirls. The timing was perfect, we caught the first show with only 6 other people in the theater, and were able to pick up our daughter at the after-school activity on our way home to the others. We really enjoyed the movie by the way, (Eddie Murphy was excellent!) so I am glad we went.

Wednesday was a half day of school. I had our oldest son stay home from school because he had a bad cold and while he wouldn't admit it, he was not feeling well. Good thing he stayed home because it turns out that he was really sick, and without going into details let's just say that I spent the morning washing a lot of laundry originating from his room.

I did manage to get the underpainting done for a "sort of" commission (more on that later), before the others got home from school. My daughter had a friend over so most of the time they disappeared into a world of dress-up and Groovy Girls, and I was able to spend a few hours catching up on puttering around. I spent most of the afternoon adding music to my iPod and cutting up t-shirt cotton from the box-o-rags that I order from Rose Brand. I go through a lot of these rags in my painting process, so every once in awhile I have to pull a pile out from the box in the attic, wash and dry them, cut them into smaller pieces, then fold them and put them away in my studio. My son helped me with this yesterday, which is good practice for him as he is going to work as my assistant this summer. This little job looks easy and I always think it will go faster than it actually does, but it took most of the afternoon.
This morning I spent some time outside, taking my walk then shoveling, chicken chores, and filling the bird feeders. Then laundry, cleaning up and a long chat on the phone with my son's teacher. I would like to get back into my studio this afternoon however if another distraction shows up I will probably grab it. Despite being pretty excited about the boxes that I painted on Monday. I am putting up one of those pieces in addition to the other partially completed one. Tomorrow I will discuss them in more detail.

If I were to stand up right now and go into my studio I could get in a few hours work today. First though, a few minutes putting in another load of laundry, then I have to check on a few blogs...well maybe tomorrow I will get some painting done.Heh.

7 comments:

Ed Maskevich said...

I like the boxes. There is something so simple and meditative about them.

Jeffrey Hayes said...

Totally cool to see you doing still life!

Tracy Helgeson said...

Thanks guys. I think it's a subject I am going to pursue a bit.

Karen Jacobs said...

I especially enjoy the second box painting... the random marks which invigorate the surface and incorporating the foreground into the box composition. Nice job!

amber said...

Wonderful again something that doesn't get much attention done a la Tracy i love it

Claire said...

The boxes are great. And sometimes it is good to ease off a little bit :-)

Tracy Helgeson said...

Thanks, Karen. The random marks that you see are part of the underpainting, which are still visible because it's still unfinished. However, some of those stronger marks will still show even after I paint over them.

Thanks, Amber, glad you like them.

You are right Claire. It is odd to be such a lump lately, but I can't say I hate it!