Holiday Blues

Chrismukkah

Happy late Chanukah, I mean Christmas. I don’t really celebrate, but I sort of missed out on Chunukah this year because I’ve been sick on and off this whole month, even at my opening. I’ve been trying to rest wherever I can get it, but I’ve also been busy, so it’s hard. All I know is that it’s time for a blog post because it’s been far too long. It usually gets my mind and my thoughts together, but this time, I’m not so sure.

Not feeling well tends to make me feel depressed, more than my usual depressive self, which is a kind of sadness that lies just below the surface just about all the time. This is what I believe makes me appear “fragile.” Or maybe it’s not an appearance. Either way, feeling under the weather just makes all of this stuff much worse. I guess I officially have the holiday blues.

I keep trying to paint. I am working on that old broke-down trailer in the desert with the spaceship high up in the sky. I was really excited about it, but I keep fluctuating between feeling inspired and feeling disinterested about it. I assume it’s because I’m not feeling well, or maybe it’s because I really should be taking a break from making art all together. I just have mixed feelings about “breaks.” Why do artists need breaks anyway? And how long do these breaks really need to be? I worked all the way up until I installed the show, which was November 24th and today is one month later exactly. I’ve been drawing a little – about twice a week or more (a little less than usual), and I’ve sat down at my easel very few times in the last two weeks. So I am beginning to feel like some kind of lazy bum right about now.

Then again, I want to allow newer ideas to manifest and form before I go chasing them down onto a canvas or a panel because I find that I am not quite committed to any of them yet. My commitment just seems fickle right now. Like working on this one painting that I have on my easel has been bothering me because I don’t want it to turn out like the rest of the Joshua Tree paintings I have already painted, but that is how I’ve been working on it. Maybe it’s out of habit. Not sure. But my intention was to really loosen up and abstract it, and kind of marry it with the vibe of the Rock and Refuge pieces. I haven’t been doing that yet though. Maybe I can only do that (loosening) with collage? Collage is so much more intuitive for me. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try a collage over the weekend.

The other day I did an interview with Dabbleon Art which would have aired air on YouTube next week, but the audio went awry, so it’s not going to happen after all. We were hoping to get it out there before my Artist’s Talk at Craig Krull Gallery on the 9th of January, which is on a Saturday. I will be doing a Q&A with Craig at 10:30 AM. It’s a bit early, so I hope people will still come out. As far as the YouTube interview goes, maybe we will do one later sometime in the future because we definitely had a great conversation. It was a shame that the audio didn’t pick up correctly, but that’s just the way the ball bounces sometimes.

greencar

For the last few weeks, I have been driving all over the city, seemingly non-stop, which is another reason I haven’t even had time to make any art. I don’t know what happened, but I just got booked up every single damn day with something or another, much of it social dates, but some were doctors too. I also had to go to a gallery event at AJU (then went back again to pick up the work), and twice I met up with a friend that I am starting a new collaborative film with. Then I have therapy once a week to boot, and that’s not close by. I drive to the Valley for that!

All the socializing I’ve had to do has caused me extreme anxiety and depression, and most of all exhaustion. I really could not explain it to anyone unless they have experienced this same phenomenon. It’s common with introverted people though, that I know. It’s difficult and I have really thought about how I must plan out my calendar from now on so that I’m not messing with my mental health. I just have to keep my boundaries and learn to say “no” to people that want to do stuff when I’m really not up for it.

The collaborative film is something I am excited about though. I met filmmaker Keren Hantman when I was on the Reciprocity retreat last month and we knew pretty much right away that we were going to be collaborating together in the future on something. We’ve since been meeting and getting all the logistics together and have decided to do a stop-motion animation short and are now in the script-writing and character development phase.

In case you didn’t know, it is the one year anniversary of mjp’s podcast, THIS IS NOT A TEST. You should listen to all 52 episodes, but especially his most recent anniversary special, The first annual THIS IS NOT A TEST Christmas show and pageant of simpletons, a.k.a. episode #52.

Here, I’ll make it real easy for you:

So, until next time…

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