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I usually set up my paintings by drawing them out with charcoal on the canvas before I apply the paint. To avoid sneezing from the charcoal dust and accidentally wiping out all my efforts, I wear a dust mask.
Little did I realize that this humble item, which has been kicking around my studio for years, would suddenly become one of my most valuable possessions.
Are your night-time dreams filled with secret messages? Mine are. Except I don’t usually know what my dreams are trying to tell me, so I write down every detail of what happened in the dream and put the narrative aside to decode later. Sometimes it takes me hours upon awakening to chronicle all my dreams. If I have an early-morning engagement (coffee date, job, meeting), I carry a notebook and make lots of trips to the bathroom to jot stuff down stuff I might not remember later. I even index the dreams on the back cover of my journal (a prehistoric version of hashtagging) and note the page numbers so I can revisit the dreams in the future. Most of my dreams are nonsensical (“brain farts,” as an acquaintance of mine once called them), but sometimes they’re good little stories which seem like advice I’m giving myself.
I had a great dream last week, and I’ve decided to share it with you, since listening to other people’s dreams is almost as exciting as getting gas for your car or eating all the vegetables in your refrigerator before they rot.
As the curtain rose on my dream, I found myself at a meeting of visual artists. I only knew three of the artists in the dream; the rest were strangers. Our meeting took place in one of the galleries of the Los Angeles County Museum, for no reason I can fathom except we had a window view of cheerful greenery instead of the gray, frozen tundra invading my world right now. Two of my artist friends were extras without much to say for themselves. The third artist sat on a chair at the front of the group delivering an informal talk about her paintings. (In real life I highly admire this painter and respect her skill, integrity and brilliance.)
The brilliant, skillful painter lectured the audience about her work habits. “Instead of approaching my easel like it’s my date on a drunken Saturday night,” she said, “I use my time in the studio seriously and act like a real professional.”
Let us all now follow her advice and stop fooling around.
In my last blog post I wrote about my death struggle with a tiny painting of a Nemesis. Things were indeed looking pretty bad with that painting until suddenly, sometime toward the end of November, I stepped back from my easel, paintbrush in hand, and realized I’d completed a masterpiece.
In other words, I WON!!!
But it turned out I only sort of won… the plot thickened a couple of days later. You see, a college student asked to visit my studio and interview me for an art class. That sort of thing happens to me a lot, and it’s not usually stressful. Students want to see what the studio of a working artist looks like, so there isn’t a lot of prepping on my part. But this time, as the hour neared for the student to arrive, something in my atelier felt shadowy, flim-flammy, not quite right.
While I scanned my workspace with anxious eyes, trying to make sense of the matter, my phone rang.
The caller was a painter friend of mine who visits my studio a lot and agrees that I won the Nemesis battle. “What are you up to today?”
“A college student is visiting my studio and interviewing me for a class assignment,” I said. “They’ll be here any minute now.”
“Well then, I won’t keep you on the phone. You need to get ready.”
“Oh, I’m ready. There’s not much to get ready.” My eyes suddenly rested on the Nemesis. “Except I have this nagging feeling I should hide the Nemesis. I feel like I should protect the student from it.”
“I agree. You should keep that thing under wraps and be very careful how you show it.”
“But it’s a masterpiece,” I said. “It feels like my Mona Lisa. Why would I hide it?” As soon as the words spilled out of my mouth, I gazed into the eyes of the Nemesis and shivered. “Omigod. I’d better hide it.”
“Go. Do it now. Call me later and tell me how the interview went.”
I hung up the phone, grabbed the Nemesis, and hid the painting in my art storage closet.
The interview went well and the student turned out to be amazing. I called my friend after the interview and we agreed I’d done the right thing when I hid the Nemesis. In short, that was that, and we all lived happily ever after.
Except as usual, I wonder who’s running things around here…me or my paintings?
Sometimes a tiny painting puts up more of a struggle than a giant, epic mural.
I speak from experience.
In October/November, I locked horns with a portrait of a nemesis. Not that either I or the nemesis have horns, but it felt that way. I spent two weeks shut up in my studio with that painting, cheered onward mostly by coffee, carbohydrates, and wonderful friends who dropped by unexpectedly.
Eventually I ran out of coffee and carbohydrates, so I washed my hair, pulled on my fashion boots, and headed outside to run errands.
My first errand was to swing by an art exhibition I’d heard about. This particular exhibition featured works-in-process by a bunch of very cool, hip artists. The man manning the exhibition was not only one of the cool, hip artists in the show…he’s also one of my favorite curators.
After giving me a tour of the exhibition, he gazed at me. “So, what are YOU working on right now, Nancy?”
“I’m doing a painting of a nemesis,” I said, “but it’s not going well.”
“Of course it’s not going well,” he said. “It’s a nemesis.”
As I gazed at autumn leaves drifting through sunlight and gumming up car hoods in the parking lot, my phone rang.
Clearing my throat, I answered. “Hello?”
“Good afternoon,” boomed a melodious baritone. “You gave me some good advice in my dream last night.”
Although I recognized the voice, I proceeded with caution, since the caller was male. “What kind of dream?”
“A post-industrial dream.”
I laughed in relief. “What the hell is a post-industrial dream?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I made that term up just now.”
“I love it!”
“Pretty brilliant,” he said. “I’d better write it down.”
I heard the sound of rustling paper.
“I am a genius,” he said. “No wait, that sounds terrible. How about, ‘I think I might be a genius?’ ”
“Sounds good.”
“I dunno. Maybe ‘genius’ is too strong a word. Maybe ‘brilliant’ is a better adjective for me.”
“Yes, yes, you’re brilliant. You’re the most brilliant person I ever met besides me.” I drummed my fingers against my metal folding chair. "Now tell me the advice I gave you in the dream.”
“I will in a minute. First I have to lay some groundwork.”
“I would never give you advice that needed groundwork.” I said. “That sounds more like something you would do. Are you sure it wasn’t you disguised as me, giving yourself advice?”
“Oh, it was you all right.”
“Is it advice I already gave you but you didn’t listen to at the time?”
“No. It was new advice.”
“Would it be good advice for me too?”
“It didn’t really apply to you,” he said. “It was meant specifically for me.”
“Just tell me the damned dream.”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath and described how I counseled him about shopping for ergonomic pen nibs on the internet. But I doubt the advice came from me, since my pen nibs are all made from moulted pigeon feathers, and when they cease to be ergonomic I just go find new ones in the parking lot.
I’m kind of pre-industrial that way.
I was in the checkout line at a grocery store today and the man standing behind me said, "Hi. How is your day going?"
"Fine," I said. "How is your day going?"
"Horrible," he said. "I have to work tonight and I hate my job. It's the most boring job in the world."
"Sorry to hear it," I said.
"Do you know how boring my job is?" he said.
"No," I said.
"My job is as boring as watching paint dry," he said.
"I love my job," I said. "It's the most exciting thing in the world I can think of to do."
"What do you do for a job?" he said.
"I watch paint dry," I said.
[This blog post originally appeared on October 20, 2014.]