03/12/2005: "Paintings, pizza, and panic..."

I stayed up until 4am working on the harmonica player and the woman playing upright base on the beach. I changed some things so now I have to redo stuff that was already done, but at least I was working hard.

I slept in until 11, and then spent a couple hours getting my studio ready. I took all the paintings not in this show down and put up pieces for the April show, to see how they look as a group. Half the paintings are on canvas and half on panel. The panel one's I can't hang on the wall so I have to come up with some other system for viewing them since I only have 3 easels. Any suggestions?

I also spent an hour and a half cleaning brushes. I must have cleaned at least 50 of them and I still have twice as many still dirty. Next I restretched one of the canvases that had two puffy corners (I *hate* that) and then started a fresh pallet of paint. Now I've been sitting for 30 minutes in front of the woman playing saw painting, incapable of getting started on it.

I think I'll order a pizza and pick up some Jack and Coke and come back and give it another shot. I feel so stressed out right now, terrified because the paintings are far from being finished and I'm afraid that by working on them I'll continue to make them worse. I keep reminding myself of the positives, like, I thought I only had 2 weeks left but actually I have 3. And even though Rick and I already bought our tickets to go to Anchorage for Easter I can always cancel that trip if I have to (my sister Jenny will be frustrated as I *always* do this to her) but it is an option.

I look at my paintings and think how silly it is that it matters this much to me. Sometimes I feel like I'm really losing perspective on what's important. It could be the toxins from the paints and solvents...oh well, at least I'm not feeling any compulsive need to cut off any body parts (yet).

Replies: 4 Comments

on Saturday, March 12th, Howard said

Will the works on panel be dry enough to frame? That's probably the easiest way to deal with them.

on Saturday, March 12th, Elise said

Well, I want to have them up where I can see them while I'm still working on them, since it's oil paint, they're still wet. Once they dry I'll frame them but I'm afraid of doing that while they're still wet.

on Sunday, March 13th, Howard said

Ops, misread your post.

hmmm, maybe leaning them on old chairs.

you could always hammer together a temporary easle out of some 1 x 2's and a T-hinge

on Sunday, March 13th, Elise said

Making a couple of temorary easles sounds like a good idea, I can't really lean them on chairs because I have two cats who probably want to rub up against them. I do have a whole stash of 1x2s though. Thanks for the suggestion!