No Naked Ladies!

Saturday night, I went and did something I haven't done in years.

Those of you who know my (distant) past might well be alarmed by that comment. However, I did NOT smoke anything, put anything up my nose, or go to bed with any strangers. No, no, most of my old habits remain firmly where they belong, on the compost pile of my personal history. All I did was search all the cupboards for mostly empty tubes of paint, wash up some very crusty old brushes, and spend a few hours painting.

I used to do a fair amount of painting. For several years - say, from the age of seventeen to twenty-seven or so - I painted with pretty fair regularity. I've never been more than an enthusiastic amateur, and I've never really been much good. I can paint naked ladies pretty well, and that's about that. I have stacks of naked lady paintings in the closet.

Once, in my old house, when I had all the art up, I threw a pretty big cinco de Mayo party with a pinata full of airplane bottles of tequila and lots of Mexican food and a big bonfire. That was a great party. So I was told, by a fairly drunk guy who said "This is a great party! Good food, plenty of booze, and boobies everywhere you look!"

When I moved to the new house, I put up a lot of the same paintings but truth to tell, I'm tired of most of them. They're all pretty good, but great art they aren't, and I think great art is the only kind you want to look at every single day of your life. Right? Since I am far too cheap and also too narcissistic to buy art, that means if I want new art up, I gotta paint it.

So I tried. Shit, what's the worst that can happen? An ugly painting? I can live through that. I couldn't even worry about wasting a lot of perfectly good paint, because I didn't have any. All I could come up with, after some serious searching, was a couple little bottles of craft acrylic - black, orange, red, yellow, and white - some light blue house paint, and some metallic gold spray paint (which I didn't use.).

Then I put on my headphones, cranked the tunes, and painted like I just didn't care. The only rule was NO NAKED LADIES. Here's what I ended up with:

This is the first painting of the night - Mount Baker as seen from the back of my property. Well, before the Holiday Inn went in, that is. This took me about an hour and a half and while it was fun to do and I'm not exactly ashamed of it, I'm not in love with it, either. It's about two feet square.

This was inspired by the copper beech out in front of the house. It doesn't actually look a whole lot like that tree, but I love it nonetheless. This picture took me half an hour tops, and I DO love it. It's up in my kitchen already.

I don't know when I'll paint again. I'd like to fix up my "studio" which is really just the shed. I hang up the canvasses on a nail on the wall and use the top of the chest freezer as a table. Last night I was driven inside by a skunk who came very very close to the shed and was then apparently startled by something. Maybe by me belting out "Me and Bobby McGee."

Even if it's a long time before I paint again. It felt good, in any case. It sure did feel good.