7:52 AM
It's foggy and wintery. It looks nice.
I have a croissant for breakfast.
My headache isn't so bad, but my ear is really stuffed up.

9:34 AM
This journal appears to be me taking a microscopic view of my life. It seems simple and boring, but if it is it's because I'm not looking at things through the right lens. Look closely at small things, and learn to appreciate them before desiring the bigger things.

My ear isn't feeling too bad at the moment. It's still cold and foggy.

11:54 AM
Here is a comment someone left me:
"Divine madness!! What a delight to follow you here. Your skillful distortions amplify character and emotion through the subject. Your work often manages to be passionate, serious, and totally hillarious at the same time. I also appreciate your obvious relationship to art as personal process. It seems to me that some of the depth of your work comes from this genuine toil in the garden of self. It must be wonderful to have these works filling an actual space.

Thanks for sharing your gifts with us.

Thank you as well for keeping an eye on me. I'm delighted to have caught your interest."

I would be lying if I said I didn't like comments such as these. A person works a lot, puts there stuff out into the world, and then often hears nothing. This makes it all seem worth it.

4:16 PM
It is grey and cold on my side of town, sunny and windy downtown. Took E her lunch and it was gorgeous out there but still kind of cold. The bus that I rode out there was funny; the further one got to the back the dirtier and more graffitid it became, but it was very gradual.
Now I'm getting ready to heat up a pizza and get some painting done...at least that's the plan.

9:50 PM
Finished my painting, the one with the scrapings and bluish-green surrounding it. A title is needed.
It's really cold here.

10:07 PM
A Q&A with Lex:
Her question:
"when i paint, or before i start painting i'm always blank, i can never think of what to start painting and i just start throwing different colors on the canvas and then decide i've fucked it up so i stop. then i think of something to draw and i start all over. well friend my paintings aren't that great, yours, yours are. so i guess what my question is, is how do you know what to paint, or why do you paint the things you do?"

My answer:
i often will start that way, just pushing paint around randomly. then i'll let it sit there for a couple of days, couple of weeks, and see if it's hinting at a direction it wants to go. when i do art like that i look at myself as more of a medium holding a seance rather than an omnipotent creator. a lot of artists have done that. i think it takes a long time to get to that point, at least for a lot of people. it did for me. i'd say keep working at it, let it change as it goes, because it has a life of its own and will want to grow and change. even after you sign it and it hangs on someone elses wall it will continue to change because different viewers will get dofferent things out of it.
why i paint what i do all depends...some things i do are there to help me understand a situation, a problem, etc. others are meant to change the world outside of my skin, just like a spell.
others i don't understand until years down the road..as of today i feel i understand why i painted the "five dead men" series....in 1998!!!!
so experiment and play and don't take it too seriously. this is one of the few places that you can screw up and it doesn't matter. in fact, maybe try to love your screw ups and look for the wisdom/creativity in them.

10:45 PM
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23419627-details/Toddler+with+eight+limbs+branded+'reincarnation+of+Hindu+god'+to+undergo+life-saving+operation/article.do