Project Runway

When my alarm goes off, I want to keep hitting the snooze button for hours. Instead, I have a method. I contract my stomach muscles and then my back and then my legs. I do it in a circular pattern. I imagine I'm spinning... building up the required escape velocity to break free from the gravitational field of my blankets. Eventually I will fling myself out of bed violently. Then I immediately run to the shower and stand under the pour until I can stand being awake. It feels brutal but necessary.

Sometimes I have to do something creative, something ambitious. This is all about gathering momentum. I have crashed, and in order to feel like I'm flying again, I need this. I need projects to get me feeling alive again, to feel like I'm propelling myself down a runway and starting to catch enough wind for lift off. So I've started painting. Painting feels a bit like contracting my stomach and my back and my legs. It feels like I'm willing myself to bust out of something dark and wet and loathsome. I don't like it. It's not peaceful. I feel angry at the paper. I want to spit on my canvas and cut it with a knife.

Here are the first three paintings that I've done in years.

This one looks so much like a mountain that it makes me want to puke. I was trying to paint an abstract and wound up with a cliche.

This was an attempt to paint an abstract that wound up being a self-portrait. Even more cliche?


This was my first attempt to paint on canvas. Painting on canvas is so cliche. Painting sucks.