Strike while the iron is hot, stupid.

I had my favourite model at the studio on Wednesday and for perhaps the first time since she and I started working together, I was entirely unable to make the painting work.  We decided, since we'd already booked another session in a couple of weeks, to finish the piece then.

However since then I've been thinking that perhaps I should just abandon figurative work altogether.  Maybe even abandon any kind of representational work too. 

I think I've been telling myself that I need to prove something by creating paintings that are easily recognizable as nouns in order to validate myself.  Like somehow the work I really love- the abstracts that make me fall in love with paint each time I make one- require some sort of counterpoint based in the stark reality of life in order to be taken seriously.  The more I think about it, the angrier I become with myself.  I haven't sorted this out yet, but I intend to do so soon. 

Perhaps it's not the right time.  Or perhaps it's not the right thing.

Last night I went to the ICA with a beautiful woman.  She and I have met in passing, obliquely, for years now but never spent any real time together and she always seemed so smart and engaging. I asked her to go with me hoping to find some connection.  I think I may have.  I can't tell.  Maybe I'm stupid.

There's a common thread of indecisiveness lately in the troubles I've found for myself.  I seem to require more time to think about, digest and consider the ramifications of a thing than the world wants to allow me.   The world moves so fast and I'm so damned slow.

My mind is as disorganized as my workspace.

At one time, I was much more impulsive.  I made snap decisions and stuck to them.  And I was often wrong, having created uncomfortable, untenable situations.  This works well in my art, because I can always edit or paint over what I've done.  But I can't paint over my life, try as I might (and have).  So I've become perhaps overly cautious. 

I'm hanging my show this afternoon at Brookline Lunch in Cambridge.  I'll post again, separately, with all the details this evening once it's up, but for now, I have to ask myself- do I really want to show anyone the nudes I've painted?  More and more every day lately I find the whole endeavor to have been entirely childish both in the ideation and the execution.  What the fuck!?  I'm hanging a show in 6 hours and can't even decide what to hang.

I want so desperately to grab the bull by the horns, but I can't decide which bull and I'm spending far too much time analyzing the horns.