an excision

I had the much dreaded surgery today, an excision of a squamous cell lesion on my forehead. The procedure took a little less than two hours, no pain, my anxiety calming as the surgery went on, just a local anesthetic, eight sutures, into the Seventh Street Campus of Trinity Hospital, Moline at 7:30am, and out at 9:55am. Follow-up is a visit to the doctor's office to have the sutures removed on Sept 3.

Post-affect: just a little tired, relieved that it's over--on with the "vacation". Maybe I'll paint some more tomorrow--painting again is a highlight of the two weeks off from work, a good thing! Jim is off tomorrow and maybe we can drive to Iowa to look for some Damar varnish on that side of the River.

Doing it!

A very lovely, sunny Saturday! The days of rain seem to have passed; not too humid, not too hot there's energy and mood to get some things done.

I started three oil paintings...seemingly "good beginnings"...like they might go somewhere. I also gessoed a bigger manufactured (cheapy) canvas; now it looks fairly good, a wonderful surface. I'm only lacking some Damar varnish, not easily available here...I'll find some, across the River, on-line, it becomes more important later. Over all, I'm pleased with the set-up, the "studio" and also pleased with myself for getting into the painting...my mother's birthday today, maybe that blesses in some mysterious way the work I've done?

Ideas tend toward Botany...or cloudscapes, or fairly abstract combinations of both. The palettes-colors of all three beginnings are just slightly odd, oranges, lavenders, blues, odd greens, but all are so preliminary I don't know what's permanent and what is not...as layers advance there can be big changes.

So I'm pleased to have started...last time I painted I was staying in Alton, Illinios, maybe eight years ago. This newly started batch seem related to the work I did in Alton, smaller, freer.

To keep at it is the thing! Surgery for some squamous cell lesions on my forehead early Monday morning--that should not be a major ordeal--then a few more days of vacation to get the paintings I have started into shape. Or the art process on-going, it would be nice to be anxious to come home from work so I can work on my paintings! Or wintering down there in the studio, hot coffee, a sweatshirt, work at my little easel. I have to get Jim to move my track lights so that working at night, in the dire light of dark winter here...is easier.

A few days ago Jim went down to the basement and overhauled, cleaned out, made bare a workroom next to my bedroom. I had been napping on the couch upstairs--some pain in my shoulder, loaded with ibuprophen--and when I woke up I discovered that Jim had made a "studio" for me. With some consideration, this is probably the best place I've had to paint for decades. The intention of my two weeks of vacation from Lowe's was to become a "famous artist". Now, as of Friday of the first week of vacation, I've done nothing. The imposing logic--now--is that six bad paintings would be better than one careful "great one". With the place to do it, paint, today seems the day. I've moved an easel, my art table, art supplies, an old rack for storage, my CD-player/radio into the studio space.

Emblematic of a place to paint and time to start it, the photo below is of some old palettes, smeary with dried pigments, still brilliant with the colors that make me happy and keep me busy. Seeing the old palettes excites me!

Lauren says she's currently into "green" so I let ideas percolate that concern "green"...maybe something Mississippian, sylvan, horizontal, the humid miasma of this place, with some form of sky over all, gray, rain, a parting of clouds, some Midwestern blue peeking through. Or Robert says I should do a self-portrait...maybe down the road abit. But the issue is really to paint; it doesn't matter at this point what to paint...going into the new studio, setting out pigments, putting it onto my gessoed wood panels, stepping back...that's the breakthrough.

Stapelia blooms...

Matthew gave me a cutting of a little Stapelia and it's has decided to bloom; a star-shaped flower, slightly odorous, foul, it attracts flies. This is a slight variation on a former, long lost Stapelia that bloomed in a cracked terra cotta pot on the rickety front porch of our old house on Ronan Avenue, in Wilmington, California...sixty years ago, a faultless memory of something so insignificant. Last Saturday I bought another kind of Stapelia from a woman at the farmers' market in the Trinity Hospital parking lot, for 75 cents; it's also blooming, a cluster of buds, the one flower that's open, a dark oxblood color, small, also star-shaped, perfect, the inner texture like velvet.

stormy weather

Thursday, August 23, 2007... A series of powerful and drammatic rain storms has passed over this area in the last few days. Yesterday afternoon, an uncanny darkness and murmorous, rolling, distant thunder, then stiff winds, then blasting sets of rain, coming from the west, out of Iowa, across the Mississippi River, darkened the sky at 6:30pm as if it were 9pm. Lightening flashed every few seconds as the storm moved above into Illinois.

a beginning

Milan, Illinois, USA

The second day of vacation from Lowe's. My good intention--to use this time to paint--has been stalled. My left shoulder blade-shoulder-arm, seized with some new pain (arthritis or rheumatism?) limits how much I can do. Jim cleaned out a room in the basement next to my bedroom for me to use as a studio; a good space, good light, uncluttered, I need to move an easel in there, my drawing table, other things, and become familiar again with the efforts to make paintings.

Not easy, Jim home this weekend, both days, Saturday and Sunday, I'm finding it easier to have my "off time" alone. I've asked Lowe's to schedule me to work all weekends and I suspect they will. He doesn't instigate discord, but, being with him for long periods of time, undiluted, I feel edgey, just nervous. The problem is within me--or mostly so.

Very welcomed rain, off and on, all day today, often very dramatic, comfortable. A self-portrait of me today on the back deck...