Thursday was the first anniversary of the first of my three eye surgeries. I’m learning to live with the results and have stopped complaining about them, but that and the ever escalating chaos coming out of DC occupied my attention last week and made me late with the post. But I have three new birds. I’m happy with the two small pieces, #30, the Magpie inspired by the ones in our garden in Newcastle, and #29, the Vulterine below, but it’s #31, the Condor above, which is much larger, that is what I’ve been striving for. Paul says it’s the most Maureen McCarron of all the Maureen McCarrons he’s witnessed me create. It may not be as dramatic or expressive as some of the others, but it has a maturity that made me judge the previous work and eliminate half a dozen or so from my website. It has also inspired me to rethink only numbering them and to add their species to their titles. I now see the ones that got cut as studies, the work I did as I sussed out how to use the charcoal and to make the marks I wanted to achieve. I plan to do new versions of a couple of them - definitely the rooster, and maybe the frigate, which was the first drawing in the series. Adding white paint and mummy colored pastel to the mix was part of my learning process, but the Condor has neither of these. It’s just the charcoal, buffed, blended and aggressively erased.

I also plan to do a much larger white cockatoo with its crown feathers fully unfurled, but I’m not sure the paper I have is big enough for what I envision. Because that’s my goal. Much bigger birds, enormous birds, birds that truly grasp their godlike quality - but for that I need a lot more space than I currently have in Provincetown. Not to mention a place to store them and how to transport them once I move to the UK. This would require another grant or winning the lottery. So it remains a dream for the time being. Which reminds me of the dream Paul had when we first hooked up. In it, he was helping me hang a show because the work was huge and in ornate gilded frames, and way too heavy for me to handle. Back then, the birds were on tiny wood panels and I was adamant about not framing them. But I am always open to suggestions and within a couple months, I had switched to paper, which demands to be framed, and the work had doubled in size. Soon enough, it tripled. When I returned to wood panels, my minis were a thing of the past as I began the paintings that made up the show I had this summer. All of which were framed. Now I’m back to paper. Arches, my preferred brand, makes wide rolls, but maybe I should consider canvas although I don’t care for a surface with that much texture. Either way, gilded frames or not, I still need that big fat grant or to win the lottery. Best get cracking on that then, onward.