i haven’t done any painting in a long time.
this frightens me a little, because if i’m not a painter i really don’t know what the hell to call myself. it’s the only thing i’ve ever done with any consistency. there are paintings in my studio that are older than any of my friendships. art is all i’ve ever done.
the past few months i’ve been learning some new skills and trying different things – still creative or design-related, but different, which is all well and good but i don’t know how far i can take them. and i worry that i’m losing the skills i used to have.
i’m not sure what i’m doing, and i’m not sure what i am.
i used to document everything through my art and writing. i remember blocks of my life in terms of the kind of work i was making at the time. these past few months, i’ve stopped doing that. my sketchbooks have lain untouched. i have only a few photographs and disjointed emails i sent to myself or to friends. i don’t know if any of the relationships i’ve formed are real. i don’t know if i’m actually connecting with anyone or anything.
i finally have a couple of days to myself, for what seems like the first time in forever, so i went to the studio and primed a large canvas, five feet high. a blank canvas still exhilarates and scares me, but the only thing i really need to know about myself is that i can be alone in an empty room.
if it turns out that everything i’ve been trying to do and everything i’ve been trying to take in from The Outside comes to nothing, at least i can still do this. at least i can take all this nothing inside me and around me and make something.