Dying, Floating and Scheming

I'm rockin' out to The Ting Tings on a Monday morning.... oh wait, afternoon.  I lost my morning in a book, pancakes and hot-glue, followed by a big dose of Photoshop.  Above is one of the newly "fixed" images.  It is a view from my studio/apartment.  I has a texture that I want more of my paintings to have, like each mark I make is important and therefore keeps its texture.  Painting over and over on marks makes different marks that are less fresh.  This painting has a freshness to me.  It's on paper, by the way.
Ohh, baby.  I like this one.   It really has a new presence after documentation.  It's called "Over Fukami".  Fukami is the big pond across the street from our apartment.  It is seriously beautiful and inspires many of my landscapes because it has such intense stacking and packing of shapes and spaces.  I made this painting/collage when I was concentrating on adding more space to my paintings AND keeping the freshness of mark-making.  I'm still not sure if the recognizable floating building ruins the painting or not.  I really like it anyway.

"To Fukami"

I usually start these landscape paintings on site and then bring them to my studio to finish them.  On this particular day I was sitting above Fukami pond in front of an apartment building.  An old woman came out to talk to me.  She asked me what I was doing so I showed her my paper.  It still looked like a two-year-old painted it so she politely nodded and made a very Japanese noise that means she loves me even though she doesn't know what the heck I'm painting.  I even gestured to her the general direction that I was trying to paint to no avail.  Oh well.  She then went on to ask me if my teeth were all mine and original.  This would have been as funny as you are probably thinking it is, except that I had already noticed that she was missing quite a few, and the ones left ranged in color from metallic gold, to orangish-yellow to gray, making the topic quite non-random.  In the country here (as in the US too I think...?) many people, especially older, have very bad teeth.  Dentist visits are reserved usually for when there are problems with your teeth, not preventative care.  

Thank you Mom and Dad for taking me to the dentist all my life!!!  

Also, thank you for my braces.  Those are not as common here either...

"Dying Maggie"

My "old-lady-baby" Maggie died last spring.  I was heartbroken that I wasn't with her while she was so sick.  One of the difficult things about being abroad.  It inspired a ton of paintings, mostly of her in various toxic-like stages.  This one seemed like she is actually dying; leaving her body and slipping into the strings of the universe.  Poor Mags.  She was really sick.

News from the tourist front:  I finally got Mikel out to a mountain to snowboard on Saturday.  He is a total natural (which I am so jealous of!  he didn't even fall over getting off the lift!)  It was really fun to be with him on his first chair-life ride.  He noted how peaceful and relaxing it is.  I love skiing but I can't board for the life of me.   I did get to sport my new mini-skis (snow skates?  What are they called?)  I LOVE them.  They are wicked fun (although they are not as fast as long skis.)  After our ski adventures with other buddies we went out to eat Indian food before heading home.  Then we schemed to get as much of our weekend to ourselves as possible so that I could get my applications done and Mikel could prepare for his show next weekend in Tokyo (Hachioji)... although he has all week off whereas I have to work tomorrow...  Is that really fair?

I suppose I should go make the most of my time.  

Happy Monday!