Day 87: Sleep of History

I never fail to be inspired by literature. Even non-fiction text does it for me most of the time. I don’t know what it is. Maybe in a past life, I was the last Mayan scribe who witnessed all the books being burned during the Spanish inquisition and so I harbor a sense of the sacred when it comes to the written word to this day. (Can you tell I just watched a PBS documentary on cracking the Maya code?)

At any rate, I actually spent a lot of time in the studio today, which isn’t self-evident considering I’m showing you one 5×7” canvas here. I started off by labeling and categorizing some previous work to prepare to list it for sale on Etsy, selecting words and painting them on to 8 small canvases and setting them to dry and painting the edges of a couple finished pieces. After getting prints from my recent photo trip to SF, I spent several hours working on a nightscape of Chinatown. By the time 6 pm rolled around, it was clear to me that I was going to need a lot more time for the scrollwork, banners, lanterns and lights. I probably could have pulled it off by midnight, but I decided to finish up one of the small text pieces instead and call it a night. I’ll be back in action tomorrow morning when the light’s better anyway.

The text in this abstract acrylic painting with green-blue, white and touches of brown reads “into the sleep of history”. Just a few words together like that, and they’re somehow sad, heavy with importance, and accepting of the motion of time all at once. Capote, you brilliant sonofagun. P.S. It’s my Aunt Shelli’s birthday! Happy birthday, Auntie Shel!