Keeping it out of my comfort timezone

And here I am at the studio, painting. It is now 9 o’clock, and I’m taking a little break, so to speak. I am here since 1 o’clock in the afternoon.  And it is good.

I decide to do two things today: pull an allnighter, and test one of my boyfriend’s theories, the Survival Kit.  He says you can survive in any situation with a tooth brush and a pair of clean underwear.  Coming from a traveler, I take this for the truth. I edited his idea into the Ultimate Artist Survival Kit:  a blanket, an extra tee-shirt, an extra sweater ( oh, yeah... most artists won’t tell you, but one of the things about a studio is that, inevitably, it is cold, because, inevitably, the heating is not on yet, even if october is here), a tooth brush and paste, the ever-so-important clean undies and your studiomate’s sofa bed.

But why pull an allnighter? Usually by now I would be out and going home, where I would take a shower and go to bed, my brain being exhausted by the painting day I just had. Yet, I would be more exhausted by the thinking: where to put this color? Is the painting good enough? How will it look? I remember, in art school, when I had homework for the next day, I sometimes painted late into the night to finish it. I was not thinking, just painting, because it had to be done.  My brain got into a surrealistic state where you just pour out whatever you got, because that is all you have left. I then went to bed really early in the morning, telling myself : ‘I’ll just hand in this thing. If I get a C, I’ll be happy’. The next day, when I looked at my work, I surprised myself because the work was actually good; it was raw, simple and personal. The filters had been removed by  the fatigue and the carelessness. I want to recreate this state today; I feel I need that careless feeling paired with the action of smearing paint on a surface.

I already worked on 3 paintings, and started sketches for a friend’s poetry book.  The little blank canvases are looking at me, serenely from the floor. I have a wood panel drying flat, splashed with toxic fluorescent green paint, and a huge 6 feet by 6 feet portrait behind me.  I did the underpainting for some sculpture paintings, and gessoed some surfaces. I’ve done more today than I have in the last two weeks.  I have given myself this time, and it is handing to me some great things.

Turns out the studio under ours is having a party, and I hear the music playing as if I was there.  It is very much fun to hear oldies and paint.  Make me think I am in the right place, at the right time.