Studio Report 2/4/25

snow

Slow morning drinking coffee and watching the snow fall. The sky felt darker than usual. That feels appropriate, to be honest.

I eventually walked through the snow to the studio. Recently I’ve been mostly focusing on the next painting in my blue man series so I decided change it up and take the first half of the day and just doodle on some works on paper. Since they’re so much faster and they feel more like sketches, it can be easier to explore new things.

step one: draw many hearts

step 2: draw the rest of the picture

I hadn’t played with the paint sticks in many days, and my arm let these waggly paths make their way onto the paper:

converging insects paths or something?

I got to listening to an episode of Rainn Wilson’s Soul Boom podcast while I worked this drawing out. It surely influenced the little inscription contained within this creature’s core:

diverging or converging paths??

“My body’s ability to bear witness to the simultaneous beauty and horror of existence far surpasses that of my soul”

I’ve been kind of grappling with this idea of late, this acknowledgement of the intolerable overwhelm that is trying to experience our existence more fully. This realization that, if I were to fully let down all of my filtering and coping strategies, merely watching the sun rise, pass across the sky, and then set would be so simultaneously awe-inspiring and terrifying as to be utterly paralyzing. I would be able to do nothing else. Part of me feels compelled to witness that in such an honest and complete way. It’s also terrifying.

The rest of the afternoon, as you might imagine after that chain of thought, was an exercise in anxiety management. But, I still made some progress on my painting:

ribs for lunch, anyone??

It’s coming along but working on it after finally taking some time to do something else really made it clear that this thing needs to come off the wall for a little bit and take a rest. Whew 😮‍💨

Until next time,

Wolf