Gotta get more gold leaf.

My mental shopping list for on the way home from work today. Can't have enough gold leaf.

The urgency on this particular day is because I'm desperately trying to finish a painting to some meager standard of okayness so I can hang it at the gallery tomorrow. I'd started it in August sometime, and the concept was well laid out. I was pretty excited. Then I, of course, procrastinated and went to try and develop it last night but it was a disaster. Which brings me to the ultimate artist's cliche-- you really just can't force it.

The analytical side of me has fought this for decades, insisting that really that was just a load of crap. Real artists worked, dammit, and they suffered through whatever decontruction and reconstruction that was called for until that simultaneous orgasmic-denouement moment, so blessedly called completion. That other shit was a copout. But I'm starting to come full circle to my adolescent attitudes and think it just can't be pushed, man. I suppose these cycles mean something, but I'll think about that later.

What's inadvertently being illustrated here, as I write, is my horrific placement at the dead center of the spectrum between so-called left-brainers and right-brainers. I am telling you-- it's torture. I'm constantly drawn and quartered between guilt, carelessness, curiosity, and rationale. I can barely tolerate the artsy fartsy types, but I'm clearly no type A. It motivates me not to work harder or be more disciplined at either school, but to stagnate and whine. It really is pathetic. I'm not even the type whose self-loathing results in some brilliant creation, I'm too stuck in how I'll market my work to really let go. I don't even think I have anything to let go of. My work is rather superficial. I call them condo paintings. Nice to look at, but not quite good enough for your primary home. I hope that last statement isn't too telling....

So yeah, more gold leaf. And liquid adhesive. Hope I can bang this out.

KJ