stepping away from the safe cocoon of being inert, taking the first step onto the tightrope, beginning to draw back the already taut bowstring where my comfort zone was– it can certainly be daunting. frightening, even. i have done this so many times, but the stage fright inherent in really beginning a new piece just […]

— cuz that’s what i have been doing of late. before i made my recent trip up to colorado i ordered in a negative reader– something i can put all my old analog slides and negs into and digitise the images, making it possible for me to reproduce older images, and if i find enough

seemingly spiralling away into infinity before me, or perhaps more apropos, the vortex in a toilet bowl. at least, that’s about what it seemed to me. early the morning after the wedding i began separating the wheat from the chaff– winnowing down some 550 images, and ending up with a mere– MERE!!– few less than

the morning of the wedding. i woke up in a tent, smelling of woodsmoke. first time camping in some years– i was a little cold, but sweaty for some reason. slowly that sun came out and we all got up and started a fire and had some coffee and warmed up a little bit. beautiful

or “from here to there and back again” to plagiarise a famous author. i guess i should also adend that with the note that this is really “take 2”– i got about 600 words into the first attempt before i just gave it up, unhappy with my results. i pray there is no need for

election day here on the island of cozumel– i tried to write this blog yesterday, but i bored myself with the prose, so here i go again!! i had wanted to begin this piece with a great shot of the malecon i took yesterday morning, but the file is too big, so i am trying

i crawl on my belly like a reptile…. i sometimes wonder what people would think if they could see me at work on my stuff– when i work on my sculpture, of course, i sometimes drool– at least, if my concentration is sharp enough. but this week of painting has been intense, and i have

i’m listening to some live queen this afternoon, and suddenly realised that, after finishing up painting for the day, i still had a little jam left in the old brain cells, meaning i could jot a few lines down here. i still have to walk over to the casa de cambio and exchange a few

been trying to come up with a snappy title for this new blog, but nothing much has really come to mind– “what a long strange trip it’s been” was already taken, and anything else sounded hokey or overly dramatic. SO– instead, you get this little preamble. thing is, i wanted so much to write, and

is what many people were thinking that the mayan calendar running out meant– much like so many proposed that the year 2000 would signify the crashing of most computers. as for me, i subscribed to neither of these views– BUT!!– i felt compelled to try to finish up my sculpture before the end of that

um, yeah– there i was during october, making great progress on my sculpture, sure as the devil i was going to be able to finish the sucker off by the end of november, and in the midst of november there was no longer any doubt about it– i was going to bring this thing, this

and i don’t consider that hyperbole, either– this particular piece of marble has been in this particular state for what i imagine is several million years. i can already hear the protests, and i say that the fact i have made a few “deletions” is somewhat moot, as i am speaking of the stone itself

of cozumel. cozumel smells, in short, but it is not always a bad thing. we’ve just gone through a long bout of flowering plants– bushes, trees, tomato plants, shrubs and everything suddenly brought to life, courtesy of the rains. it hasn’t rained like this at this time of the year in maybe 10 years, and

a few days ago i wrote a friend, telling him that i felt like peter o’toole and omar sharif in “larry of the dunes (my personal title for one of my fave flicks, “lawrence of arabia”)”, trying to cross the endless-seeming nefud desert (the one that “cannot be crossed”)– and, hell– i’m really just beginning

of rogues– this post is for my friend saul, who seems unable to claim access to some of my painted pieces via the internet– hopefully this will remedy your problem, saul!! in all fairness, these first two are not really paintings, but rather some early drawing works in pen and ink, early pointillistic efforts of