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.