I awoke in the white gray morning to the sound of the dog’s breathing. I’d been in an elaborate dream where I was walking some back woods campus with President Clinton. We were looking for someone, or some event and having a convivial conversation. He seemed like a nice guy. I was going on and on about how the grid woven into a canvas must have had an influence on our very way of seeing and or recording that sight…. or is it that our way of seeing and knowing is somehow dependant on the grid and all moderin painting is the act of rediscovering the grid because it is just rediscovering the canvas and the streatcher… I was prattling on and Clinton did a good job pretending to be interested. Later, I found things in the street that seemed to echo the morning: a toy car trailer that seemed to be a sculpture of me dreaming, a link from a watch band like a moment taken out of time, and a small piece of graph paper.

In an ideal world, I’d like to be making great hunks of paint and painting like the above head which is all thick and juicy and filled with pallette scrapings and paint. This kind of approach with diners might catch the visceral quality of food and drink and conversation that I am after. As it is I’ve only made a couple of heads and these somewhat dainty sketches…. which are only fun when animated. Confusion and idiocy and poverty.

I’ve run out of white paint and canvas, but a studio neighbor threw me some trimmings from beautiful primed Belgian Linen. I knocked up these bizarre figures today carving the paint away with rags, exposing the white priming below. It’s an old glazing technique I haven’t used in a while. Let’s you show off the grain of the linen I guess. I have enough to knock up three more I think.

The talk was of Hobbes on the Radio and it got me thinking about those old illustrations of The Leviathan and so I painted this flirty, half blind, coward over an old crowd painting. Strange. Then I did some ink on vellum traces of paintings and voila: Clark comes after Willoughby. Maybe this is what Willoughby ought to be drawn on instead of little pages (These are fairly large panels of paper). I bet video would look great projected on or through vellum. Naturally I get all these great ideas as I run out of materials and money. Typical bullshit.

I’ve been thinking about the word “Gulf” lately: Persian, of Mexico, rich and poor, private and public, white and black… I’ve been thinking about the word: “GULF”. I googled it and noticed that the logo for Gulf Oil actually seems to have expanded and grown wider or fatter over time. It sort of figures.