There’s only one new bird this week, Encore, a 24x24” canvas which is another version of Temperance, the rook I did a last month as well as a third version called Ruckus from 2024. It utilized the technique I’m developing of blending gesso into charcoal and pastel to set the pigment without having to use fixative. It’s been a learning experience because the gesso works better with white or pale birds, so I had to expand the palette to include black, deep blue and burnt umber paint in this piece. I do like the effect though, especially the blending of the beak. In the meantime, I had a long, lovely phone call with a very old friend who I lost touch with when I moved to Cape Cod. I can’t remember how we met but it was definitely in the 70s. He is, sadly, losing his eyesight but he seems quite stoic about it as he continues to paint without really being able to see exactly what he’s doing. It made me realize how profoundly grateful I am to have been able to adapt my work to not being able to see as well as I did before the cataract surgeries. I suggested we do a show together since he paints trees, which feels like a natural fit, and he is as spiritual about trees as I am about birds. Perhaps it will happen. Let’s hope so - okay, on with the day.

Yesterday, I had a post ready to go but then I bought a new-to-me easel and had to rearrange the studio and my storage to accommodate the purchase. As you can see from the photo, once I moved things around, the easel was a perfect fit. You can see the comfy chair by the window where I write and have my morning coffee too. It’s Yard Sale Weekend in Provincetown, a long-established tradition because so many of the summer residents leave after Columbus, or as we say on Cape Cod, Indigenous Peoples Day. In addition to the easel, I bought a box of almost new sixty half sticks of the brand of pastels I’ve been using along with charcoal I am mixing with gesso lately. Oh, and a very sturdy, lockable archival hard case to carry art to the UK the next time I visit. And I only spent $60 on all three - yay!

I’ve been up painting in the middle of the night again, it’s a difficult habit to break. A couple of nights ago, I went to do a final touch to Witness, the piece above, but when I sprayed it with fixative, the fixative pooled into a nasty puddle that I had to clean up right away. Which also took off a bunch of color and I ended up scrubbing the whole piece down and starting over basically from scratch. It had looked like my usual work, lots of detail and texture, but I decided the fixative drama was a sign to do something less expected and more akin to how I see things closeup since the cataract surgery. Below is Witness in its earliest stage. Most of my work starts out like this. I love that simplicity and always miss it in the finished work but I’m learning to put the brush down before I revert to texture and detail again.

Witness works, as does Prophet, also charcoal and gesso, below. It harkens back to what the Bird series was originally about - my reaction to the 2016 election results. And since you-know-who never left, even during Biden’s term, the series continues. I slip in and out of creating images that are more viewer friendly, more sellable to the general public, but the gallery season is over in Provincetown so whatever happens in the studio now will just be part of my learning curve since I never stop developing as an artist. As it should be. The charcoal studies I posted last week were in preparation for the collection I’ve started here with Witness and Prophet. And now that I have an easel, I can go a lot bigger, as we head into the midterms and whatever chaos ensues afterwards. I got my mail-in ballot on Friday and I will be marching it over to Town Hall next week. I have no words for what’s going on these days, okay, I have plenty, but all I really can do is paint. Which I’ll be doing shortly - on with the day.

I’m spending a lot more time in the studio since I prepared it for the documentary being filmed here a few weeks ago. Not that it was a mess exactly - it was organized and I knew where I’d tucked things away, but it was my work space and not meant to be comfortable or inviting. So it wasn’t, but It is now and I start the day in the big vintage overstuffed chair by the window with that first cup of coffee and my journal. And when I am not actively working, I sit there contemplating whatever is currently on the drafting table. Which makes the process more fluid, or at least more sensible, so I don’t bolt out of bed in the middle of the night to look at the work I have been doing without really seeing it like I used to. The whole thing is more relaxed, less fraught, and less precious. At top is Avatar, one last canvas for the last show of the season at the Ali Gray Gallery, which will be continue to be open part-time during the winter, and below are two new charcoal studies of a magpie and a vulture that I am very happy with. I’ll let you decide if you feel the new routine has made a difference in the work.

In the meantime, as I debate whether to go to the UK to be with Paul for the holidays or stay here and make money at the craft fairs, I’ve been distracted by the Cornell case. First of all, it bothers me that the word rape has been reduced to SA, but I am heartened that social media is on fire about this and half of the commentators are men in their twenties and thirties. For the record, it is no secret to those who know me personally that I was assaulted by a serial rapist in NYC back in the 80s. It is a long and complicated story that includes him escaping during the first trial and my being under police protection, and the FBI catching him in Florida six months later. He was convicted at the second trial and after twenty-five years, there was a fifteen year cycle of parole hearings. During those hearings, instead of painting, I worked on a memoir about the incident and aftermath which I was unable to finish because the story didn’t have an ending yet. So I picked up the brush again nine years ago to save my sanity. Enough, on with the day.