The interesting thing about the last few enteries is how the random photo images seem to influence the next days painting… like the wilting flower and the tattered American Graduate Smiley face forced a rework of the beer drinker into a semi platable sad story portait. Other than this I’m watching the Dylan thing on PBS. Every morning I feel like quitting painting and then I paint. Why is it that I love the act of painting but can’t stand making paintings… or even really the idea of paintings?

On the way to the studio I saw this tear of color in the subway sign. I immediately saw a figure in it and on closer inspection, I read the word “Create”. So I followed the orders and drew in the eyes and nose. A colaboration with an unknown colleague. It may have lead to me painting on the reverse of some beat up canvases.

Been busy working on some large paintings. The above is the end of some American party and I was trying to cop some of the styles of the Ab Ex moment, when the counry came to dominance, to look at it going off the rails. The one below takes up a whole wall of the studio and is made out of three panels of canvas stretched on the wall. It has something to do with gluttony and all the people it takes to feed the glutton and make the beds and set the table, etc. I was working on the separte panels when suddenly they all seemed to talk together.

After lunch, I pass the muslim school on fourth avenue. You see the kids out waiting and the girls in their head gear. Around the corner, a woman appeared in a vision of total black burqa. It was visually arresting in the brick wide open sky. She had only a postal slot to peer out of. Even her hands were hidden in velveteen black gloves and she looked a little like the yin to the KKK yang… or a witch. I was thinking about how maybe the European fairy tale image of a witch might be based on crusaders seeing women in burqa, or is it that muslim men put women in burqas from the same fear of women that led led to burning them as witches? Then again, wasn’t a lot of that witch burning going on in Spain (where there certainly were plenty of muslims) and so maybe burning witches is a sort of euphemism for burning muslim women? A string of thoughts ran through my head as she adjusted the burqa in the humid breeze and you could see her hands moving black against the concrete background and I think I’ve never looked at anyones hands this way….. following them the way you would a face and she was off down the street looking like a punctuation mark in the landscape. An exclamation point at first and then a question mark as I crossed the street towards the draw bridge.