Drive-by Noting

• Working on a few paintings. Feeling like in love with painting all over again.
• I had a running list of things that irritated me on a given day that I'd been wanting to let out.
• I had a running list of cob-webs and dust bunnies in the dark chambers of my own soul which I couldn't, really, let out anywhere.
• So I went to Confession, in stead, last Saturday.
• I'm feeling all better now.
• In my mid-40s I discovered that it's more important to know what I CAN'T/WON'T do, than to know what I CAN/Will do.
• That is not to say that I haven't discovered the wisdom that it's better that I love Temperance, than hate gluttony; love Prudence, than regret carelessness.
• I continue to be shocked that people still think being "open-minded" is up-to-date. Same goes for some folk's pronouncement of being progressive without the slightest sense of embarrassment.
• What's wrong with me?
• I love Milton Avery. His works remind me of what my late professor H said about Matisse's Red Studio, that it is "a fiction." That, in turn, reminds me of how the Chinese artists traditionally never considered art to be an instrument for mimicking physical reality. Never entered their mind, it seems.

Milton Avery, Birds Over Sea, Phillip's Collection

Henry Matisse, Red Studio