Time to revive this blog

tomorrow i will post a new image. it is time again to be working everyday as an artist.

new work

it has been a while since i have painted so tonight i decided to go big... this 2 ft x 3 ft painting was truly a blast to create! i hope you like it!

a poem for a painting

I see you as full
White arches.
Contours engaged, unfolded - rounded,
Volumes of light spilling over.
Remade in your ceaseless
Coming and going.

I see you as waves -
Subtle contrasts.
Your feathered wing-tips
Dancing around me.
Catching our makeshift arms -
To Heaven aspiring.


I see you there
Noumenon in phenomena.
Silent until you find me.
A map of you shifts
Through the space and light.
Dark pathways guide me towards you.

I see you there
Within a nameless landscape.
Patterns of you,
Non-repeating,
Parting fields and seas
In your touching.

I see you there
Within layers of form and substance.
And the textures of your delicate
Finger-prints
Wick tears from my dry
And weathered soil

I see you there,
Gentle-whisper.
You touch me, and I know you
In all around me,
Filling my thoughts,
Blinding my eyes.

I see you there
And I cannot have you.
But with my wings I will engage you.
Leaning into you -
You catch me.
Carry me to other shores

Tonight my canvas was my house...

i used acid stain to color the concrete floor of my just built second bedroom! what a crazy process! I liked it all except the part about acid stain being nearly deadly. so for about half of today i was sporting a wannabe darth vader outfit and breathing through a respirator. today was a good day for it though, the weather was good enough to leave all doors an windows open. i have some images to post once my camera batteries charge up. happy blogging America!

with love,

daniel

p.s. i started Yoga this week with megan (i know, what the crap!), and it is surprisingly hard and really fun. it was time to start meeting new people and getting my body back in shape for soccer. i thought yoga might be a good first stop, so far so good. perhaps i might meet a nice girl interested in health and wellness?? here is the cool thing, all types of people go there - the single unifying quality is their above average bendiness. something thing i did not expect is that it is "hot " yoga (i forget the real name) and that adds a cool dimension to the workout. Picture this: the room is above 100 degrees and we are all holding these ridiculously challenging poses and breathing really slowly, the people are all sweating so much that it looks exactly like we all just got out of a pool. after my first day i was sore for the next 2 days (and i am not in bad shape, i run a mile and a half in well under nine minutes without effort, i play a lot of soccer do push-ups, sit-ups etc... but i was still dominated by simply standing in a hot room!) well, time to sleep.

Another day, another painting...

...another painting done but not posted. i painted two watercolors today - both portraits. i will see if i can post them tomorrow.

okay, so we need some good reading to fill the void of having no pretty picture to look at. tonight i have some notes from a chapter i read yesterday. the book is called "A Passion for Truth" by Abraham Heschel.

The quotes: "Love and Truth are the two ways that lead the soul out of the inner jungle." "...the essential goal is living in attachment to God." "The central issue is not Truth in terms of doctrine, but veracity, honesty, or sincerity in terms of personal existence."

those are some nice highlights from a few pages of a good book.

thanks to everyone who still visits this little blog! i will try and make it more worth your while in the coming days. have a good night.

love and peace,

daniel

Well, how long has it been?

I am back again. I took a few weeks off from posting - but I have been painting! Have I painted every day? Well, no I have not.

Here is the short of it: It all ended the day one of my dearest friends from high school called and said he was in Larkspur for the night visiting family ( he lives in Portland). I knew that it had been too long since I had seen him - so I made the trip. It was a good time with good talk. BUT I did miss painting that day and it was hard to just jump back in knowing the string was broken. I did make it over seven weeks. 50 paintings! It has been a strange few weeks, full of talk and thought, full of reading and reflection. It has been a time of strong ideas and real learning. It also has been the start of women's soccer - so my coaching schedule is very busy again!

All of these excuses aside, I have still been painting (about 4 to 5 paintings a week). I will post the retrospective of the last few weeks soon. Until then, enjoy the nearness of Spring.

Daniel

p.s. This life is amazing.

Why use words... when this will suffice

This is a perfect painting for my temperament... hovering between comic / bewildered / isolated

But words don't match the layers implied by this simple shape in the expanse of space around it.

I have re-read Ecclesiastes tonight and I think it was good, but it got at the root of me too. There is too much to say and I don't feel like recording it here - I am tempted to push the blinking cursor far far down the page... but I will let it be.