Gonzo, my feline friend, is sleeping in the chair behind me right now. He snores gentle, delicate cat snores.
He has recently returned from a six-month stint of sleeping in the basement, and I have to say that I missed him while he was gone. I enjoy working with him in the studio. Painting and writing can be lonely work, and for a while we had a good rhythm: He snored, I worked, the deadlines got met.
And then one day, he started sleeping in the basement. … Was it something I said?
Of course not. Gonzo is a cat, and changes his patterns like the weather.
A cat changes its patterns, and I think nothing of it. What happens when MY patterns change? When I change?
Can I change, without resistance? Without trying to hold on to images and stories?
I haven’t shared a lot of art this year. Why not? Patterns change. … perhaps there is no reason. Perhaps more change is coming.
But there has been art-making and exploration, which is probably the more important part.
I experimented with trying to do less, and played with bits of nature — leaves, branches, flowers — to make monoprints and mixed media images focused on natural forms and the expression of what already exists.
Over the summer I hung some work at a local restaurant, including the new images and older work as well, and distributed a couple hundred more You Are Love prints, and about a thousand stickers.
And the perpetual exploration in and of consciousness, continues. How could it not? What else is there?
There is a cat. He is snoring in the chair behind me. For now.
