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.