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I took a break from the panels today.  I worked on a collage with the idea of a crazy quilt.  Of course it’s harder than it looks, and I didn’t get much further that cutting up some paper.  But I decided I needed to do collage and drawing first, because after a morning of painting, I’m not interested or energetic enuf.  I’m ducking the gym because D is in ChiTown.  I’ll get back to it, I know I need it to have any kind of energy.  After the collage I revisited these red daylilies.

So far, the panels are flowers meet patchwork quilts and Diebenkorn.

Sorry for the interruption, but it isn’t my fault!  I wish these knotheads would solve healthcare instead of sabotaging my website.  Although it does illustrate one of my strongest beliefs.  There are creators or destroyers.  Even tho I don’t like destroyers, they do exist.  I am thankful that I have the time and energy to be a creator.

I’ve started the three panels.  Today I concentrated on one.  Yesterday I was reintroduced to art quilts.  It got me thinking.

For my BD I got two surprises.  One was good, a new and much bigger studio.  The other was bad.  North Koreans or someone hijacked my website and filled it with malware.  So Google slapped a big red banner across it that said ‘Attack Sight”.  Luckily Gregg could fix it and Forrest got Google to check it and take it off the EVIL list.

I like my new studio.  I’ve screwed my back up and have been working at 1/2 power.  Maybe next week you’ll start seeing some new work.  I have three panels and am contemplating a triptych or a screen.

I also realized that it’s about time to do another self portrait.

Yeah, I got my site back!

I am getting close to finishing this screen.  I’ve learned a lot and I  like the panels.  The next one is going to be three panels.  The theme, so far, is Winter-Summer.  Each side must relate to the other, but be different enough that you care to see either side.  The book idea is simmering on the back burner.  I alternate between boldly moving forward with big works to shrinking and hiding, very much like the economy.  Boy, this sure isn’t the golden years I imagined!  So maybe like Microsoft, instead of thinking of these times as a negative, I will just obfuscate and call it a feature!

I know this looks “cartoony” now.  I was looking at Matisse’s cutouts, and borrowed some of his colors and the idea of layering colors that are very close over each other.  The mask is an image I’ve used often.  I’m quite sure that there will be spattering and interrruptions.  And when it’s all said and done, well, theoretically, we’ll have a painting.

Last year we made $12,000 and paid $8,000 in health insurance premiums.  In Dec. we ran out of money and had to cancel the ins. and borrow money from Forrest.  Not a position we ever expected to be in.  Finally things are improving and we went back to BCBSNC.  Even with jacking up the deductible to $5400 and doing a HSA, they won’t insure us.  If competition is the backbone of American finance, what are the health insurance companies scared of?   The GOP and naysayers can blame the unisured as  pariahs on the economy.  So here’s a good GOP solution.  “US establishes death camps for das uninsured.  SC GOP Spokeswoman says” With the price of gold, this is a fiscally responsible plan.”

I suffer from being Scottish, or just an ornery penny pincher.  The RAPGrant gave me plenty of money to do a big project, to really pursue the questions “What if, or what else?”  Now that project is finished, the money spent, and I am at a loss.  I did a very nice painting on canvas, but I ended up channeling Peggy Lee.  Is that all there is?  And “how you goin’ to keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?”  My what if’s and else’s seem to be going beyond a flat surface.

Last year Gregg and I began discussing handmade books, and what does the concept “book” mean.   Since thinking, drawing and wondering are mostly free, I’ve been doing that.  After all was said and done the materials for Chemo were not that expensive.  We didn’t end up using the hollow core doors that  we sketched that project around.  However, I am a HUGE fan of painting on those doors.  So Gregg decreed, and I concur, that we will now call them “panels”.   These panels are often available at the Habitat store, so I can also say I’m repurposing old building materials.  Now there’s a buzz word for you.  We bought some books at Goodwill with the idea of incorporating them into bigger books.  This was the inscription in one that I’m probably going to use.  Maybe.  Like I said, thinking’s for free.

I got my picture in the paper yesterday with the press release about Chemo Today.  It was in The Guide, which must only go in subscribers papers.  I bought the paper to find this out.  Gregg brought The Guide home from work.  Thanks to the Case’s.   Did Andy Warhol mean that everyone is famous for 15 min. or you accumulate seconds, that add up to 15?

I have to quit picking at this stonewall or it will move toward hyper-realism.  Horrors!