Rincon, Puerto Rico.
Hello, Beautiful World.
It’s been a minute since the last Smooth Ray post. I spent some time on the west coast of Puerto Rico, holed up with in a seaside hotel with a Muse. We drank cheap Medalla beers and ate tacos, stared at the water and pondered the mysteries.
Call it product research. One day, Trumansburg will have the only seaside taco shack in New York’s Finger Lakes.
Back home though, it was tough to get back into the studio. Habit and inertia are powerful things — much like ocean rip tides, which are particularly strong around storms. People basically work the same. You get used to the blank page, you learn not to be afraid. But if you fall out of the habit, old fears come back.
Yesterday I painted for the first time in a couple of weeks. It felt familiar.
So, to announce his return to the artistic ring, Smooth Ray is releasing a new print!
Title: Whatever You See, That’s What It Is
#236-265
Size: 3x4” print on canvas of varying size
Date: 2022
Medium: Relief printing, water-based ink, watercolors on 140-pound cold pressed paper.
The print’s spiritual origin is in an Alexander Calder sculpture, which I roughly copied in watercolors and then carved into linoleum. The end result is … whatever you see.
These will be going out next week to Little Free Art Galleries and individuals who have signed up for the Smooth Ray mailing list, and will be left around town in T’burg for discovery.
There are a few in the shop, also—and one is free, as always! Ordering it should not require you to put in any payment information. We all need some free art, once in a while.
