And thanks to everyone who put flowers, hand-made placards, little pieces of cake on paper plates, photos of me and other memorabilia outside the front of my house. Sorry to have to tell you I'm not quite dead yet. I ought to be in light of the project I'm working on: Twenty Terrible Paintings in Twenty Days. What else can you do when you've been away from the studio for so long? Everything is so backed up in the graphic design world that I just keep going with that. Then I get good and tired of design work and I spend my time usefully getting a Google I.D. for my dog. She needs it for her blog, honestly.  But. I have to force myself into the uncomfortable process of painting again. When you see these latest 'works' you may wonder why I have to paint again. Good point.  As Gertrude Stein once said:

There ain't no answer
There never was an answer
There ain't going to be an answer
That's the answer! 

Frankie the Airedale Criminal's Blog: www.airedalecrimespree.blogspot.com

Can you believe it? I actually started this painting. I'm using those Chroma Interactive acrylics--love them--because I can't work in watercolor or fluid acrylics. My art benches are low to the ground and it hurts my knee to sit like that. with an easel I can raise the chair to a comfortable height. It's all good.

Here's my beginning of the small tulips. All I had left to work from was the ceramic jug itself and the original drawing. I wanted to exaggerate the size of the jug and the leaves, making the tulips appear even smaller. I have no logical idea why this appeals to me, but then, I don't need one. You all know how it goes. You see something a certain way and you make it a bit more like the way you see it. Something like that.

Frankie the Airedale tried to add a nose print to the painting. The beauty of the Chroma paints is that you can blend even after a 'skin' has formed. So, sorry Frankie. Your signature won't be on this one.

I've been ordered back to the drawing table. At lunch a couple of weeks ago three good friends ordered me back to work in the art studio. I'm having trouble sitting at the bench. Painful knee problems and a miasma of near-depair have colluded to keep me from getting up to any real mischief. I did manage to post a number of post Christmas tragedies on my blog--Another Hundred Crimes: www.suckerbeagle.blogspot.com. I had some good fun with this and...it kept me from facing up to not drawing or painting. Tomorrow the orthopod will tell me something about why I can't walk. But I have been working furiously on graphic design projects. These also kept me from facing up to the fact that I'm not painting.

The other day I bought tulips. I drew the tulips. The drawing is crude but has a bit of life to it. I post it here to show that it's possible to do one small thing. The small red buds never really opened. They shriveled like my soul. I imagine them falling off, like my soul, and rolling down the street to be run over by a cement mixer. At this point I decided to get over it. The drawing could become a painting.

Things continue to look up. My friend, Emily Scudder, has a new book of poetry coming out in 2011. She wants me to do the cover art. The publisher will have to weigh in on it, but no matter, I have to start painting stingrays. Friends conspire to get me back to the art bench.
 
A friend and collector is coming over this week to look at paintings she's intrested in buying. My father needs a painting to replace a broken mirror in an antique clock that my grandfather rebuilt. The painting has to fit the clock, an old Austin Chitterton with the original wooden gears. There's no way out but to start again.

One of the most exquisitely endearing songs ever written was written by Huddie Leadbetter (Leadbelly) about his friend, Blind Lemon, who went out and stayed away from his home. When he returns, his wife is playing the piano and singing: You been a long time comin', Daddy but you're welcome here. I like to play this song when I've been out of my art studio for long enough that it's terrible hard to get back to it. I don't remember where I was when I left off. So I decided to start with something easy. A few weeks ago the leaves were falling in New England. I took long walks with my dog, Frankie. We trained on the heel command and the automatic sit. We learned how to walk together, not bother people on the sidewalk, how to cross the street--that the street is different from the sidewalk--and how to walk on the loose leash when we could stop to scent the amazing things that dogs can scent, and me, trolling for fallen leaves of all sorts. This leaf was meant to be just an exercise in getting back to the studio. It ended up being a meditation on the simplicity of one truly beautiful thing. I know that the leaves I picked up were beautiful because Frankie likes to eat them. So I have a few leaf paintings, very simple things and I have a new skill: Leaf Therapy. Will it get me back working everyday? Maybe. Let's see if I have something to blog next week.

Here, Rose is a very weird looking person. In real life she's quite beautiful. But oh Lord look what I've done to her and her on her way to the Ukraine and all. Wish me luck presenting this to Rose at her family party tomorrow--right in front of her mother and everything. And another thing--why are the eyes in all my portraits on different levels? It's not like I never heard of a ruler for when things get out of hand. I think it's beacause A. I can't draw B. I think each eye expresses something different. You decide. The painting, it's colorful. Yeah that's it. It's colorful. When people look at your work and say, "Uh, interesting." That's when you know it's time to hang up the old paintbrushes and head for the wild and wonderful world of graphic design where things are allowed to be 'interesting'. So long suckerbeagles.

Yes folks, Rose is on her way to the Ukraine next week to teach English for the Peace Corps. So I've begun a portrait as a going away thing. Usually I work all areas of a painting at the same time, but here I've left the background for later. All's I know is, it's gotta be done in time for the going-away party Sunday.

Frankly, I can't see Rose dashing for the plane with a framed portrait under her arm so someone will have to hold on to it until she comes back to us in 27 months. I'm working in fluid acrylics because they're fast. Faster than an Airedale Terrier can stick her nose into the paint tray. Okay, not that fast. I hope Rose doesn't take a look at this site before her send-off party on Sunday. I'm afraid I might find all the lights out and the door barred.

Oh the good old gesture drawing. Dawg don't hold still at all. Most of the pages of my pad are filled with scrawl, but every now and then Frankie will give me five seconds to get down a partial drawing that can be loosely identified as 'Dog'. But that's not entirely true. Nothing on earth looks anything like Frankie T Wallace. Kind friends tell me these quick sketches capture some of the frankieness of Frankie. And best of all--the drawings don't steal your dental floss and chapstick.

I suppose there's an interesting, funky answer but really, it's just this bottle of Da Vinci Fluid Acrylics--Red Rose Deep Quinacridone. I can't leave it alone. I should order a case of it, or join a support group. This still life you see before you started out in life as a bunch of beets. My daughter saw it and said: "I like the radishes." She was right, she's always right, so these are radishes. And on another note: OLD SCRATCH HAS BEEN FOUND!! A good thing too because the do-overs really sucked. I mean Old Scratch really sucks too but it sucks better than my more recent attempts.

Here's the villain that's been keeping me from my 8 hours of sleep and my art studio. It's a very quick sketch; this scalawag moves fast. She's only 5 months old and her picture already belongs on the Post Office wall. Her name is Frankie, aka A Certain Person, aka Frances Merrylegs T Wallace. She's suspected of having taken the apple from the serpent and a host of other crimes. She specializes in thieving--hiding stolen object under her huge Airedale paws while sitting innocently next to one of her own toys.(Who, me?) Worst theft yet, my pill box. Fortunately she only ate something relatively benign. She also like chapsticks. Oh those doggie lips can get so dry in this heat. She arrived in Cambridge on June 29th weighing 13 pounds. Today, August 18th she weighs in at 27 hefty, muscular pounds and counting.

Original painting of Old Scratch lost. I took it to the art store to get a mat. I'm trying to figure out a way of blaming it on the dog. Dude Palace wants another painting of Old Scratch. Will A Certain Person give me a break and let me paint it? More news as it breaks.

Old Scratch, a painting of mine--one I forgot about--is now hanging in a room called "Dude Palace". The painting is crude, but that's okay. Dude Palace is about as crude a place as you can think of. But better not to think about it. Dude Palace: think Animal House overseen by a 23 year old woman who can tame any man with her quick wit and sharp tongue. Yes, that's right folks. She's my daughter Fionna and don't cross her. See her portrait in my  portraits collection on this very website. She looks so fine and delicate, but there's vinegar in them thar veins. By the way, another art object in Dude Palace is a towering pile of empty snack food boxes on Dave Bufano's desk. I hope that Old Scratch can compete. Perhaps we'll be able to provide a photo of Old Scratch in situ very soon.
Your friend,
Jeanne