Monday 26, 2010 The First Day of the Last Week of July

Where has it all gone? I will probably be saying that on the day I die, and I will have no more an idea than I do today. Life really is magic isn't it? The last few days have been so different. It has been so hot and so dry in June, the hottest on record. And now it has been raining everyday, I awake each morning, and there is moisture in the air. Clouds bank up against the mountains, it looks like somewhere else, not Northern New Mexico. Each Monday morning, I can feel the feeling of a new beginning and I meet the morning with excitement. This week will be different, what will be different? I cannot say, but I feel it.



I guess it was Thursday I began a new series of work, or at least a little different, than the works I had been creating in the series, Poems of the Desert. It is nine paintings executed in encaustic. It seems whenever you want to shake things up a little, change your medium.



I will continue to investigate the idea of the Desert, perhaps it is no more than, I am thinking of the desert as I work. These pieces will be a little different, than any I have done before. Because I want them to be about texture, I textured the panels, and then began to paint. I think I reached the point I had just put on too much paint, I reheated them, and scraped them down, and began again. Sometimes the best things happen, when we are reworking a painting. But this time, it is my intention from the beginning. I paint, and I scrape, and I paint. I guess I don't have to tell you I am obsessive by nature? One of the things I love about the use of encaustic, is the layering process, and the "look" that is accomplished in no other way. These pieces will each be one color. A color I imagine found in the Desert. And of course they will have to work together.

I began working in encaustic in the 60's. My painting instructor was very fond of encaustic and passed his love for it to me.

I think it is this place of "beginning",
this place, so full of hope.
Even though we often cannot say,
what it is that we hope for,
or maybe it is just the feeling of hope

--the piece will work out,
we will like it when we see it,
and others will like it, too.
Or is it the feeling of being alive,
and working towards something?

The feeling that we are,
"hitting on all cylinders."
Bringing all that we have
to bare on this moment.
The feeling that something is still possible?

Perhaps, if only we could
define what it is that,
we are doing or trying to do.
...But then,....
would that spoil the magic?

That keeps us in the quite
of the studio.
The willingness to continue
without a clearly stated reason?
To fail, and to fail again.

I think there must be a
masochistic motivation,
That fuels the engine
And creates the artist
That I was meant to be

There is no other answer
That comes to me,
This Monday morning,
So I will continue,
Answer free.