Little Pieces From Big Ones

Kill Your Darlings, Darlings

...between the painting and the philosophy is the waiting. The miserable...my mind is a flapping of webbed feet, my hands and feet are moving, but nothing is getting completed...waiting.

I will grind for months making paintings and writing and concerning myself with upgrades to the Garage. To me, it seems that nothing substantial is happening. Or, it seems like no building is occurring…and certainly building on top of building.

It feels like mopping a kitchen floor with a dirty mop...just moving dirt from place to place in a circular motion. The job is not done, the floor is not clean, just different.

I am in waiting anxiously for the weather, the funds and the circumstances to align and allow me to begin the "buildout" of MDG (and struggling to create a post to show you the battle plan clearly). I'm making paintings going to some good buddies in Williamsburg VA. I have begun writing the fifth draft of a management book I’ve been working on all year. I am trying to sell art, but it's a tough market lately. Don’t cry for me…it’s coming soon.

These projects, and more, are progressing at different speeds simultaneously, and not one of them feels like it’s ready for showtime.

The cycle of incompletion usually ends at one unceremonious look around the studio and realize that I am finished....I almost never see it coming. I happen to glance up one day and boom...new paintings, decent writing, little gift paintings, art shows and a little cheese.

I know this cycle. I can pacify myself by remembering the last miserable milk cycle. That's what i call it, 'the milk cycle'. I call if by this name because the kindly imparted knowledge of two people: my friend Ben Graham and the author of a book he lent me:

“If we drew a line to represent a creative occurrence, the only portion that would reflect measurable productivity would be a short segment at the end of the line. This line segment is the equivalent of the cow’s time in the barn, hooked up to the milking machine. This is when productivity is tangible, measurable. But the earlier, larger part of the event, when the milk was actually being created, remains invisible.”

Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace

by Gordon MacKenzie.

When I think about cows making milk...I feel better. I say to myself...this is just part of the process, and then...

I turn to destruction to fill up the time. I take the old paintings and make new paintings from them. I devalue them. I turn large format abstract pieces of art into smaller, gift-able paintings. One large might become four 16"x20" little paintings.