Paint Fumes

The social networking sites always ask for status updates. What are you doing? What’s on your mind?

What’s on my mind, as it usually is this time of year, is beauty. Whatever that is. There’s something about late summer and early fall that make me vacillate between taking a treacly joy in the pleasures all around- the voluptuous tomatoes in my weedy overgrown garden, the music of crickets punctuated by snapping katydids in the dark night air- and feeling recurring seizures of melancholia that keep taking hold of my shoulders as if from nowhere. Maybe it’s the uncertainty of when all this will end that makes late summer seem more beautiful. We don’t know when the first frost will arrive and blacken the vines.

As for social networking, I’ve suspended my facebook account for the time being. It makes me even more neurotic than usual and creates a constant sort of mental static when what I need most now is quiet withdrawal and concentration. I’m hoping to finish some more of these canvases in my studio in time for my show.