Kitchen in the Cottage – Sideways

Just a note: Beginning Anew. It’s the main subject of life lately. All new things begun, will carry on, that is for sure. I am, however, looking forward to looking back, if that’s at all understandable, there’s more. I’ve been working on music almost exclusively, always writing, and now photos and abstractions of them, are the visual work meanderings. I’ve decided not to care about having an aesthetic story. Maybe a poem, like a Haiku. On the other hand, an entire library would be good. I’m still trying to find that ONE thing everybody talks about.

In case anyone wonders where I’ve been, it’s been a difficult year. My mother, aged 97 just passed away this January 5, 2023, and I’ve been her caregiver for the last 8 years. It started with a stroke and then 3 more, they were all “recoverable”. This last year after receiving covid vaccinations, she developed dementia, and that put a new spin on things. Studio time fell away, save for hours between midnight and 4 AM from time to time, when she’d be sleeping. But I had to do some work, to keep balance, to keep a perspective. She fell and broke her femur a few months ago and was healing up well, walking again and scheduled to come home on the 28th of December 2022, from post-surgical rehabilitation (she’d had a titanium rod implanted and had to undergo physical therapy). But on the 23rd she suffered what the medical professionals called a “devastating stroke”. It took out her left arm, her ability to swallow. and to speak. In the hospital they took me aside to tell me she would not recover from this stroke. They saw some slight improvement so they kept her for a week, but at the end of that week, told me there was nothing more medically they could do, and that her care plan would be changed to “comfort care”. She came home and I spent every hour by her side, she lived for another week, hospice coming in and out, and I’ve written everything in a journal, which I hope to continue to do through the process of grieving, adjusting, and starting over. As soon as I can I will start posting new ideas and works again.

Joe is taller than I am, and has a bigger head.

I’m convinced that digital painting has it’s own set of rules, especially regarding construction/deconstruction and the specifics of the “medium”. Air quotes for a few different reasons: 1a Beside the point, there’s nothing medium about mediums, they’re always large or small, in practicality, and looming-wise.
1b. Application of color whatever medium, rules.
2. Digital painting requires facility with specialized tools, an understanding of how to bend the rules, and needs to employ color calibration visually on-screen and for print foundation:).
3. Complex selection isn’t something that can be done on a canvas, excepting perhaps collage.
4. Visual acuity is a requirement even more than typical and re-orienting hand skills is a basic.

Mandalas have been an important theme spanning a lifetime, starting in the early 70’s at the Boston Museum School. I showed Mandalas I’d meticulously painted during my final review board prior to graduation at the Boston Museum School. I’d begun working with them in my second semester studying Asian Arts, history, ideas with Joan Lebold Cohen. Aside, I was very fortunate to have had the artist, who later became art dealer, Pat Hearn, on my review board that time. I remember she’d wide-eyed expressed that she didn’t know I was also a painter, having known my work in video, film, sound, performance, which was a focus in the last 4 semesters especially. I suppose if I’d gone to New York in the 80’s I’d have been a known entity of the Boston School, I knew them all and worked with most, and for reasons I can’t explain adequately here, I stayed in MA to live on Cape Cod.

      365 animated gifs, some of which you xan see here, were created as a challenge, my new year’s resolution of 2019: I will do a mandala-a-day for a full year and post them daily on twitter. It was a most expansive challenge to be able to accomplish given my overloaded schedule, having taken on the role of a caregiver these last few years. and also needing to focus on music, technology and design. I started with single images, digital drawings, and in a few weeks evolved into animated gifs, which after time I became more facile with doing. You can find all of them, scroll down a bit, at  tweets/tipotato