Clean, Dirty, Oh yeah and Attention

The floor is clean, the bathroom, clean, the laundry is done and the dishwasher is running. Did Picasso do this?  Nope.  I do not want to be Picasso, really I don't, I prefer Manet, Turner, Delacroix, Durer, Masaccio....  I don't think their lives were all fun and games, but perhaps they had fewer distractions?  Perhaps not, I have heat and medicine and so far, no plague....

I do have Mommy and household chores, phones, email, social media,computer games, TV; generally love and bad habits.  Not really much about which I ought to complain.  Perhaps that's the biggest distraction in our lives, unmet expectations.  We complain when,  just fill in the blank.

Every once in a while, I play solitaire on my computer.  I enjoy it and I'm pretty good at it. Solitaire was put on computers to help people get better at using the mouse.  It was also a great way to kill time in the age of dial-up.  When an internet page takes a few seconds longer than that to which I am accustomed, I get angry and impatient, and then I remember solitaire and dial up, and I wonder what is wrong with me.

I have noticed in the studio, where I do not take a computer and I have no TV, that my attention span is better.  Each day I work there it gets better still.  Then when I take a day to work at home, doing this that and the other thing, I lose it all and have to start building up my ability to stay on task, to look, to be focused. It is a skill, and I have to work at it. When I have it, the joy returns.  I can get lost in the image, lost in the work. Life becomes good again.

The same is true of reading.  I cannot read in light, the way I do in paper and ink.  I like the kinesthetics of the page and the ability to flip back, by feel, to find a reference point I want to re-check. I need to re-check when I read; what did that character say? In what country is this set? What color is his tie? The paper keeps me focused and in touch, literally, with the activity. I know where the words I want to find are, by the feel of the page, visually and physically.

David Hockney made a lovely image on his iPad, the new printmaking tool.  The image is available in an edition of 100.  Art suppliers now make fine paper for computer printers, 8/12 x 11 inches, all rag, French paper. I have not yet made an image on my Kindle, worth printing on such beautiful stuff. I am trying, but it seems so clean and slick to draw in light.  I am neither clean nor slick and I like it that way.

Now where is that lovely charcoal and gooey, black, oil based ink?


      PigPen