YES! That Elusive Art Muse

came to me last night just as I drifted off to sleep. I thought, "wow what a good idea". Then I spent the last few seconds desperately telling myself I must remember what my muse said, must remember! must remember! This morning I remembered and I wrote it down in my sketch book that was on my nightstand. I have no idea what it means or relates to, but heck I am going to work on it.

Meanwhile here is a photograph of a painting I did in my second class with Marie Linnekin at Ann Arundel Community College in 1996.

It is called "Doomed Pair" and originally it was just the still life pairs on the cloth at the left. I couldn't stand it, just seemed so boring to me. I was staring at it one day and thinking, oh whoop de do, two nice looking pairs sitting there all beautiful forever, so what! What really happened to the pairs. One rotted before I finished the paintings and the other got chopped up. So I ripped the painting out of the stretchers and glued it to another canvas showing what really happened to the pairs. The artist Lorenzo Dow Benedict who juried it into a my first show said it was like Courbet gets revenge on Francis Bacon. I got a real kick out of that. It was the first time I had entered a juried show and the first time I realized that I really had it in me to paint and the first painting I was really proud of.

We don't often get to hear much about our paintings after they are purchased, but I did find out something about this one.

A couple bought this painting quite a few years ago and several years later it ended up being part of a minor custody battle in their divorce (the husband got to keep it in the end.) The wife did buy another one of my paintings.