That’s just a working title for the painting and this entry. Maybe it’ll change. Maybe it won’t.

A rolling stone gather no moss, or so they say. I’m not here to dispel that saying but to confirm it. I’ve been largely stagnant for quite some time. I am trying to break out of the stagnation and back into a regular, happy, productive, art-making life. When I was in school the pace was break-neck. Having things due every week, not to mention multiple things due at the same time regularly, was a great life for me. I have been unable to fully recapture that mode of living. I haven’t even come close.

When the new-year was new last time I set up a hell of a production goal for myself, and failed miserably. I couldn’t even begin to keep up with it. Life happens. These days I have a family, several pets, a house, and a job to take care of. When I was just finishing school there was much less to worry about but, even then, I fell behind. I still engage in the mental labor of art-making, however the struggle is real with finding time to engage in the physical, tangible side of it. So, I sit and tap on my phone or keyboard and hope something comes of it someday. For example: this entry.

Another example is as follows: I stated a painting December of 2023, and didn’t get particularly far. The painting I’m temporarily calling “Mr. Fungus” sat in the drying rack for months. Ten months. Just this past week I got back into it. I spent about two more hours on it and finally got the whole thing covered in paint. I was, time-wise, so close to having it at a good stopping point but i stopped too soon. And so it languished in the racks for almost a year. Other things got done in the meantime, things continued to progress, I exerted myself on quite a bit of mental labor as to next steps for the piece. But it sat untouched for a lifetime of collecting dust.

I feel better now, having gotten the whole canvas covered in fresh paint. My original excuse for racking it was that it needed to dry. That wasn’t a total lie to myself. It did need some time to dry because I had used wet charcoal to do the underdrawing, which was a technique and material I just wanted to experiment with and see how it felt.

For the time being, this remains a work in progress. I’ll get back to it when I can. I’m not one hundred percent sure where I’ll go with it, but I’ll be thinking about it until I can get it finished. In the meantime, here’s some pictures and videos of Mr. Fungus