North Braddock Sky #1 (Jumbled Sky) and North Braddock Sky #2 (Cracked Sky). I’m pretty proud of how these turned out. The first one feels better after having mad the second one. I wasn’t looking at the first one when I made the second, and when I finished the second I realized that both benefit from the contrast. In the first one, I’ve used watered down white to create the wisps of the clouds, and in the second one I’ve used blue mixed with white, which I think works better. In the second one I used caulking, while the first one just uses paint. In general, the aggression and the starkness of the second one articulates my original purpose more clearly than the comparative quietness of the first painting.

I feel satisfied by being able to make an articulate painting. Many of my paintings feels cribbed to me after having drilled into them for so long. I want the effect of looking at one of my paintings to be this vivid world that the viewer is pulled into- this expanse of felt space. I do that, ironically, by scrunching over for hours and cutting tiny pieces of wood apart like I’m making a ship in a bottle. I lose six hours over a person’s half inch expression. When I finish a painting, I have this unburdening, but I see the painting and I feel the basement of it. It’s all good- six months later I feel great about it- but it’s hard to see what other people see after how intensive the process of creation is.

These though…they actually felt making them what I want people to feel seeing them. It’s pretty funny- I didn’t know that was an option. I’m thinking going to sleep the last few nights about whether there’s a way to do this more often. Is that how other people feel painting? Can’t be…can’t be.

I also feel awesome opening up a new subject for exploration. Every time I mine into some new realm of possibility I feel unstoppable. What could I do with skys? Panoramic explosion? Colossus soaring upward? Sunken eternity in a spiral?

Maybe I could break the sky in a landscape. Van Gogh’s Starry Night but instead Van Patter’s Dreadful Day.

Really please about this.