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It is late now, around 3 in the morning, and I would be more than happy to go into my studio to work. What I have been wanting to do for weeks now is a small painting that will be called Gorilla with Fruit. I mixed all of the colors for it, the canvas has been nicely primed and the drawing has been transferred, all of this was done weeks ago. Many situations have made it impossible for me to go in there and begin but it would be equally difficult to go in there and do so now.

I know natural light is important to many artists but everything I do is fairly artificial. My imagery begins as a photograph always which to many artists is practically a sin but I don't care. Once I have composed an image, putting elements together with Photoshop, and I have transferred it to whatever medium I am working with, I make the actual picture using artificial light. The photograph will be of a scene, landscape or still life, that is lit by either natural or unnatural means, but the conditions where I do the work is always with artificial light.

Working in the middle of the night when the rest of my part of the world is sleeping then is perfect for me. But if I were to do this, and in what I consider to be better times I did, and stay up until practically day-light, I would wake up late in the afternoon. To wake up so late in the day would be disruptive to everyone in my household because of how irregular this is and so I don't do it. I don't but I would so love to.

 

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Of course I am also aware that still life might refer to someone on death row, as in he still got life, and that there are other connotations but I would like to believe that art is the most common one. You can't really think of me and not think of art.

OK so that's it for explaining the title. I don't think we need to do any more with it.

The reason I am writing here is the same I would imagine for most people. I spend a fair amount of time online and it makes sense to use a bit of that time in a way that will somehow work for me. So to have a means of making notations about my life, since I am already here, I might as well take advantage of the format and its possibilities.

At the moment I am still 50 years old although it being September already feels as though I will be sliding into December soon enough to be 51 in mere moments and not just months. That's right, I was born on December 23, 1958, two days before Christmas and therefore, according to my mother, a Christmas baby.

While it is true that I spent a great deal of time in the 20th century and that I have a unique fondness for it I have embraced the 21st century without too much effort. This is an important point for a variety of reasons foremost that centuries are significant to artists. Matisse, for example, was alive and well during the end of the 19th century but he is really known and identified as a 20th century figure. The same goes with Picasso I guess. 

Still Life 0001

In case you are wondering the reason this is called still life is because I am still among the living. Also I am an artist and for about two years or so I have been doing still life images so using the whole still life thing as a play on words is part of it too. I guess I need to make sure I am constantly reminded of my status as an artist. Being an artist is especially difficult for me and I think I could be lured away from it with almost any form of self-expression, chief among them would indeed be writing and so doing something like this is especially seductive. Honestly I am not showing off I am just being careful.