Four new works.

I have continued to play around with painting and have 4 new "pieces" to present. I don't know if these are the kinds of paintings that will make the ultimate cut - namely whether they will be scrapped when I need more canvas or if they'll be the kind of work I want to preserve even as I run low on painting surfaces.

A chief frustration right now is that I don't have the technique necessary to express any great ideas, and given that my view of art and interaction with art has been and I imagine will continue to be as conversation, I'm struggling. I'm trying to string together babble and syntactically flawed sentences all while hoping to express something of note. This is the same frustration I had learning French. I don't have the familiarity with the language I need to express the ideas I have. That said, it's still an interesting process. Pieces that I like and those that I disdain seem to emerge as if by accident. It's like some cosmic artistic slot machine. Sometimes I put in the effort and it's apple, orange, plum -- nothing. Other times it just seems to happen that it's cherry, cherry cherry -- and voila it's something I enjoy looking at. Hell with the "Blue Shirt" painting (titles suck) I found myself getting up in the middle of the night to look at it again. Something about it works for me. Scares me, but works for me.

Without further explanation and apology here are some of the things I've been working on lately. Critiques are welcomed. Please, help me get better. If, to continue an already belabored metaphor, I'm misprouncing things, or using bad visual grammar, someone let me know. Oh, and the paintings all look much better in person. In addition to my failings as a painter, I struggle as a photographer of my works. Go figure.

It's warm out. I wonder if that is why I'm hot.

I guess not, apparently according to the tautologically gifted Mims the reason I'm hot is more likely because I'm fly, not because it's warm out. Who knew.

See:



A while back Ann sent me the link to this Village Voice article which is a brilliant analysis of Mims' "This is Why I'm Hot."

A particularly good section of the article, supported by a graphic no less:

The other remarkable, oft-quoted line in "This Is Why I'm Hot" is "I could sell a mil' sayin' nothin' on a track." Critics gibe that "This Is Why I'm Hot" proves precisely that; others muse on what Mims would sell if he deigned to actually say something on a track. Would he sell less than a mil'? Exactly a mil', as when he said nothing? Or a great deal more than a mil'? The song does not elaborate.

In any event, note that he can do those things, not will, which suggests he might not. As these claims and predictions are speculative, there are more possible outcomes; it seems reasonable to assert that Mims can't sell more than a mil' sayin' nothin'. Though we would love to see him try.



If you haven't heard the song, click here. It's catchy, though oddly annoying simultaneously. Like a rap version of "Mmm Bop."