Painting

I haven't painted in awhile-not at all actually since I was giving the art classes...it's so hard to switch over...

Takes a lot to set up a painting area and get all the stuff together that I need...

Meanwhile I am listening to CNN on the TV-they are in ecstasy between the Hurricane and what Donald Trump did today...

It was questionable timing for DT to do his twitter stuff and pull off a late Friday news drop with the hurricane looming...

As it seems that the digi stamp world is dying and the over produced colouring book is also becoming ho-hum, I have to scramble and find a new way (or revert to an old way) of augmenting my very meager income.

It's my fault I didn't plan properly for retirement-I fully believed that I would still be in my home in Burbank at this point and working at Disneyland or other jobs I looked at proved not to be great for me with my Rheumatoid Disease and Asthma.

So painting in some form seems like a good notion-I just have to get good at it....again.

Switching from drawing to painting, for me, is like switching from roller skates to Ice skates-they are similar but different enough that the change throws you...

Back when I was earning a living as a decorative painter I could A.) see better, B.) had better hand eye control and C.) had a better work space.

I could do amazing things with liner brushes and carefully placed transparent floats all things I learned and/or developed from Stage work.

I believe Trompe l'oeil technique evolved from sets of the 17th century (?)-I was getting very good at it when I stopped being a decorative painter-but that story is too tragic:

I was working too much 12 or 14 hours a day pretty much 7 days a week to get enough stock to go off and do a show tour on the east coast.

Richard, my partner at the time and I had evolved a pretty good and lucrative schedule of shows-we usually did a 3 to 5 show tour in the East (New Jersey. New York area) in the spring.

The Orange County Fair took the month of July.

Another 3 or 4 show tour east in the Fall and then the Las Vegas Christmas Gift Show in December.

In between the big shows we would do local shows in the L A/ Orange County Area as time permitted and when we needed more money,

I would teach here and there (art classes) either at shops or NSDP chapters Or Conventions (National Society of Decorative Painters) AND I also submitted projects to the many decorative painting magazines including Better Homes and did books for DeLane Publications, Krause and Country Folk Art.

I was the "Crafts Coordinator" for CFA for 2 or 3 years and did a monthly column for them.

Those were also the years when home Craft Boutiques were very popular so I did one at the house in Spring and a big one in the Fall and also did a friends boutique out in the Valley In the Fall.

I was a busy paintin' guy.

In 1994 (I think) the Northridge Quake hit and through nobody's fault-well not quite true-a student brought her sick son to an art class and didn't mention what he had was STREP-I got sick but kept on pushing and eventually I was down with pneumonia.

Obviously I couldn't keep up the pace-my anxiety disorder was kicking in and then one day I found out that my partner had been using my down time to go prowling-caught him red handed with a stack of emails he had been exchanging with people on line.

So that writing was on the wall-I won't go into all the details but Richard was out when Larry came in and my life went on-we opened a classy gift shop in Montrose (a chic neighborhood above Glendale that services La Canada-Flintridge)-everything was moving along-Larry's father died, my Mother got very ill, 911 happened and Larry went prowling after I ended up in the hospital with life threatening pneumonia for a week.

I managed to live through one of the worst plagues of all time when AIDS burned through-I took care of my friends because I was the one who wasn't sick...

SO....2003, Because of the drop in sales due to 911 and other issues the shoppe closed, Larry went away, My Mother ended up in a nursing home (thank God my sister was director off nursing there-she was well taken care of) and there I was not completely well, having to go across the valley once or twice a day to help with my Mother and meanwhile keep the houses in Burbank going---the magazine shut down and decorative painting went out of fashion.

2006 my Mother died, because she left no living trust the best solution was to sell the house so I ended up in Seal Beach-too far from family and friends...it often too 2 or 3 hours to drive across town to Burbank to see my doctor.

Painting was the last thing I wanted to do.

Art has been my comfort and my friend for my entire life-whenever I needed it, there it was, in some form.

For those years between 2006 and about 2009 it abandoned me-doing the digital stamps and then the art classes was what brought me fully back.

That's not quite true-I did a lot of digital collage and digital art during those years so I'm not sure what I'm whining about-I had a great time and made some friends that are still around today.

I tried the past couple of days to go back to Trompe l'oeil and it looks like it was done with a whisk broom...it will take time to get it back and it's doubtful it will ever be the same but I have hopes.

My friend wants me to paint pictures-I've drawn and painted a little in the "picture" category-I actually stopped painting because my drawings sold and my painting didn't and drawing was faster anyway.

When you're doing something for a living it can't take months to complete.

Ah well-c'est la vie...I haven't had pneumonia in 14 years , that's a good thing and I have confidence in my guardian angels-they never wander too far away-I just wish they were art critics or better yet gallery owners...