today i am ready to begin my painting

the last two days i was preparing the space:
1. taped paper onto the floor
2. made a curtain for my bookshelf so i won't be distracted with titles and letters and colors.
3. bought house paints: burnt sienna, royal blue
4. and a few more pastels/ rembrant soft

questions on my mind:
1. should i buy violet or mix it myself
2. home depot for plywood or utrecht for canvas and stretchers
3. live models? no> national geographic images on my mind

images on my mind:
1. crying girl from newspaper, with shiite mother in background
2. martha clark with her horse
3. memaw/ today i finally painted over my painting of the old woman in venice- i've painted and repainted this thing too many times. to start over... using the polaroid i have of memaw

thoughts to myself:
1. trust in my ability to combine colors
2. the preparations are over/ relax and let out paint
3. converse with god and all will be revealed.

"the smallest of things"

photos from my play last night... i was a pakistani girl living in iraq, trying to bring my brother inside the house

"Bread and Wine" - poem by Paul Goodman

An empty container that cannot be filled is nothing at all.
Smash you! be nothing!
Now hope is no longer hollow,
but shards are a lasting reproach of violence.
Ow! no longer am I disappointed;
whatever is broken has a bright outline.
I love you immortal contents of the empty
container that could not be filled I smashed.
In the raw light of my no longer disappointment
I am immortal drunken with the contents
of that empty container that could not be filled
I smashed, whose shards are lying on the ground.
Say! who is this tipsy fellow who is dancing for joy
as though he were in love and had what he wished for?
He has drunken the immortal contents
of an empty container that could not be filled
but he smashed it on a rock
and the shards are lying on the ground.
He keeps repeating how he broke the jug.
I too feed daily on the non-being of paradise
of which a month ago I gave up hope,
the days pass unresentfully away,
I have put on weight,
people remark that I look young.
-Alas! where is Adam? where is my
Adam who used to waken to surprise?
Adam my red one made
of the red soil of Appalachia?-
I was distraught with longing for paradise
convinced it was unattainable for me,
I came to my senses at 142
West 23rd Street in New York.
-Woe is me! where is Adam, fearless?
where is Adam namer of the beasts?--
Such is my bread and wine; also, creator and spirit,
let me make a song like Yuan Ming
on his lute that had, for poverty, no strings.

-Paul Goodman, in the BLACK MOUNTAIN REVIEW, 1955

going backwards

this morning i gave a presentation on the Black Mountain College. While i was waiting for class to begin i looked at a book of Jenny Saville... so much art, paintings, artists. I think I've looked at enough paintings for now. I must confess that the more I look the more jealous and overwhelmed I feel. need to paint. to finish school and to paint in open spaces. with more brushes (one for each tub).

i was thinking more about Picasso today. when i watched the video of him drawing- i was thinking that it made sense that he went through so many artistic periods in his life. that he began with realistic painting and finally ended in abstract representations. and that in order for him to have mastered the art of proportion (which enables him to draw perfect figures wihtout correction in a matter of minutes) he had to spend a lifetime practicing in more realism.

but why is it more easier/natural for me to draw like picasso and egon schielle than it is to draw from rembrant? maybe because i am picking up where picasso left off- in the abstract. where picasso started with the real and went forward into the abstract... i have to start abstract and go backwards into the real.

whatever it is/ it is always a matter of sensation- of something more sensual than mental .. but anyhow. off to rehearsal .