Muggy, foggy, feeling, studio fan blowing. Been painting. Still feeling rays of clear blue streams, magnificent waterfalls, Steep, climb. Hiking in the ferns, heart pounding, another world. Engaged core; I’ve recently connected with it in Yoga. It saves my knees on the descent. I grab a few flowers, I feel like I’m still sweating from the hike, even though it was hours ago. My studio time flows. My time off is almost over. Yes, my time alone is almost over. I need to wrap it up. This give me anxiety! I need more time. The past week has been draining. Glued to my TV, watching the news. Not believing there are people who don’t care about other people with the power to destroy lives and not care. I get physically ill. My stomach hurts, I just take baths and lay down as much as possible. Today I hiked. I worked in my studio. My work is strong today. I think about pain, and death while working today, even in the backdrop of the beauty of the Cataract trail. The life of the birds and the flowers. Peaceful lake. We will carry on then we will die. Trump will be gone in less than four years.
Category: introspection
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I’m sitting in a black and white skull dress in front of a grouping of black and white drawings; A powerful portrait in charcoal by William Kentridge hangs on the wall in front of me. I think to myself, don’t need to rush, I can spend as much time as I need to. I stand in front of white canvases listening to the collage of footsteps, how they echo from the other side of the wall, no faces, only sound. Jasper Johns paintings, every time I see them I look at them in a new light. I recognize a piece of myself, understanding things in these paintings I hadn’t understood before. I have moments of memory flash through my being, remembering sitting in front of these giant Clifford Stills, on my lunch break, or after work on my way to Bart. I spent so much time at MOMA I wonder how much influence these Abstract Expressionistic paintings had on my practice. The Rothko, Joan Mitchell, Jay Defeo, Guston, Lobell paintings I know. I feel like I’m with good old friends. I haven’t seen them in so long; I’ve only been once since they remodeled and that time was with kids. I miss my days in the MOMA, alone. Visiting galleries. I feel like I climbed back over a bridge to a part of myself deep down inside. Today I needed a break, a bath, studio time, writing time. So, Right when we got home today from preschool, I put the babies down for a nap. They fell asleep around 1:30PM. (An hour earlier than usual.) It was so hot and they were so tired and I needed what I needed. It worked out perfectly. Today in my studio I paint in shades of blues, inspired by our meditation on water this morning. I feel like hanging them up in my house to cool things off. My note book entries are beauties too, and I closed the cover of one more note book for my show. I love the quiet right now. I only hear the fridge, the air conditioner and fan. It’s dead hot and quiet outside. Jack and Fiona will be waking from their nap soon. Time to go and make snack!
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Purple and pink. Burnt umber and grey. Who can tell what is real or dream? Last night in a dream I walked in tall grass. It scratched my legs. Today I walked through the same grass. Little white bugs flew up but never touched me. Fiona called them flies. “Mommy” she whined. “Flies are getting on my horsy”. I walk back through the flies and tall grass. A bit of asphalt on the ground catches my eye, I hadn’t noticed it the first time I passed this spot. The area intrigues me. Old remnants of structure, of road that used to be here. A strange brown bridge Jack, Fiona, and Valentina sit on. It’s old pieces of round, dark brown, wood, it almost looks like tree branches. It’s scratchy and splintery. It goes to nowhere over nothing, as if it were transplanted from a place it belonged. “Fiona, your horsey loves grass.” I say. She got a new play horse yesterday, she loves it. Memories flood me, being a kid, playing with my horses in the grass, pretending they were eating and I was going on a ride. I imagined what I did and did what I imagined. In nature. Under the sun, the dirt, red ants biting my butt, stepping on nails, getting tetanus shots. Bugs and beetles and pollywogs. Frogs and snakes and old barns, old trailer campers. Vacant rose greenhouses where the sun shines through the broken fiberglass roof and roses still bloom. We rode our ponies through, feeling what was, feeling what the space is for us. A vacation. A dream world with real spiders and scary stories. Purple and burnt umber. Pink and white. These are the colors I chose to paint with today. It was a good, productive day in my studio. Painted in my notebooks. Pulled apart tons of pages that have stuck together leaving scars. Leaving repairs to be done. Structure. But it went well. Realized I have a lot of pages to finish in my gargantuan notebook before my show this fall. I can do it. I take deep breaths throughout the day. I stay connected. I cocoon when I need to. I got what I needed today.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 