Some journal entries from last fall before a show
Sunday, September 21st, 2025
Tomorrow morning I’m going to cut all the panels for this series and start to stretch canvas. I like the process of building up layers of gesso and sanding it as smooth as a piano key before I start to paint. It takes forever but when they are finished, each panel is like a little glazed petitfour, a delicious object. and it’s always worth it.
And then I’ll prime them with this really beautiful soft grey like this Michaël Borremans portrait. I love the way the paint sits on this warm washy grey ground.
Monday September 22nd
My task is to stay focused and I am, mostly. Last night was fun, dinner at Bad Animal with a bunch of friends. I found some great books too, including a book of paintings by Francesco Clemente at Mary Boone from 2007. YES, what perfect timing, a sort of Y2k time capsule. Strange paintings, all big portraits on horizontal ovals, with the sitter’s feet twisted to kick off the side, sort of the way a mermaid would, usually with fancy shoes instead of a tail.
Good book store! Luka is a scientist from Croatia and thinks in this old world way, stoically, especially when he talks about Fascism. Over dinner everyone was getting so riled up about it, predicting how it will unfold here. I’m filled with dread, like the ground is crumbling away under my feet.
On top of that, the earthquake in the middle of the night was terrifying. Is the world actually collapsing? I had to look at this image of Vivienne Westwood in her Cinderella outfit until I calmed down.
Monday
Last night and the whole weekend was such a wild ride. This morning I was lost in time and space, thinking about India and New Mexico and Balthazar with Tessa. I suppose my body is here but my mind is still somewhere else.
And Kori’s story about running into Francisco Clemente, so many years ago. He was riding his bike down Broadway, the silent morning streets heavy with mist, and suddenly he bumped right into Clemente, staring at him with his bright yellow eyes! Kori was stunned, couldn’t speak a word. He knew this man and his work, just like I do. He’s my favorite artist at this moment, I would have lost it!
I’m thinking about Clemente’s work so much now as my own unfolds, how I want to paint, how I want to think about painting. His work is my north star. I don’t want to make a painting that’s too faithful to reality. I want it to look more real than real. Can I do that? that’s just how Francesco Clemente’s work reads to me, he did it. He’s a good painter, he moves between rendering what’s real and what’s playing out in his mind. Sometimes what’s in the mind is more real than real, at least to me.
I kind of feel like I finally did it, with this portrait. It’s painted from life and it’s real. Lois is real. More real than real, in a way. It’s hard to describe, ok!
I want to move this way, and I want my paintings to be really excellent. How do I do that? Can anyone tell me?
I already know the answer: first of all, don't ask that question because it's annoying, also this question is the enemy of making anything at all, good or not. It's the opposite of freedom, to get locked up in thoughts of making something perfect. I'll end up hiding in the stacks of the library like I used to when I was a young chick of a painter, utterly panicked after reading a text asking for an update on the status of the commission. It was too important, I couldn't finish it. Don’t overthink it, just work.
Go to the studio, set up the space the way I like it and see what happens next, be curious. Explore. That's what you do. Also, this is your life, that part of it, the exploration. That may just be the meat of your life.
Was it stupid to try to make all these panels with this kind of gesso, the rabbit skin glue and marble dust? It’s so many layers and I have to measure it out fresh and cook it and it goes bad and then stinks and is disgusting if I don’t catch it in time… is this just a fools errand? Why did I decide to do this again, instead of buying a big can of acrylic gesso? At least I know it’s something I wanted to do. Am I trying to distract myself from the actual act of painting? No, its a wish for the quality and process of the work to be most excellent, to have integrity, even if it’s not easy to see. It’s imbued in the work, somebody will see it, or maybe sense it. Those people who can see through walls, they will recognize what it is.
Actually no, who cares. It’ about me; I will know! It’s different this way anyway, the way paint sits on the gesso, the way it absorbs and bonds with it. This is glowier and softer and thirstier. Marble dust is beautiful and made from a nice kind of rock that lots of sculptors have chosen for a long time, because of that: it’s pretty and soft. It’s not plastic like the store bought stuff, that’s just sort of gross. And now I’m old enough to know it has to have a hard substrate beneath it or it will bend and crack. Fine, fine.
Anyway, the bigger value here that I’m chasing is what, temperance? Planning ahead, planning for excellence, keeping on schedule? In my own strange way, this is how. Usually making big rangy loops until I can tell that it’s right, somehow. Going wrong until it goes right.
possibly the most illegible manifesto (it got wet at some point) but the part i like is ‘go wrong before right’
I am interested in painting well. I’m interested in painting faces and hands like sparkling jewels coming out of the darkness as it builds up and builds up, the darkness making the painting, really.
Kirsten’s disney princess hands
Tuesday September 30th
Why can’t it be October already?
I’m distracted and excited but I have to stay focused, there’s so much going on. I have to get this live scan done and finish building up the marble dust gesso and a million other things.
Could I make a test painting of the big one? A maquette, or a map for myself to follow? I don’t want to do it like that this time. Im feeling a little overwhelmed at the size and making a mistake but it would be nice to just dive in before I go to the western hills gardens to paint trees next Monday.
I want… what, Jessica? A giant granite cathedral? Like a mausoleum, guarded by angels, between heaven and earth? I don’t know, I just want to feel around in the dark until it’s right. I’m resigned to a thousand mistakes and wasting paint and time because those invisible layers matter too. Maybe that’s the most important part, what you can’t see, what’s underneath.
a test to see how gold foil stars might look, inside and outside the structure. And maybe the structure is the bent branches of trees, framing the night sky.
I really like this little oval painting of Danya so far. I like that the composition is a sort of triangle: stable, like the Madonna.
the triangle. it has this peaceful sense of balance, also the shape of the roof of a house, like a sanctuary.
Monday September 6th
Every dAY IS LIke a gift (I accidentally had the caps lock on, I like it this way.)
I’ll write it again:
Every Day Is A Gift. Like a gift.
It was warm and a little breezy outside today and Kirsten sat for her portrait in the garden, we chatted and it was all so lovely. I still have this quietly anxious drumming behind my skull, I worry. I worry about Teddy, my animal that I can glom my anxiety onto, I feel guilt. I don't trust that things can be this good. But that's it: they are that good, at least today.
That's what Tracy and Becky both tell me: don't think so much, let yourself enjoy the experience.
Wednesday, September 31st 2025
I am a great painter
I will make lots of great, brand new, shockingly amazing paintings in time for the opening, and all in perfect timing. People will faint and scream when they see them.
Hannah Love sent me a photo of a painting, she’s in Italy right now, and it struck me. First I thought about how much I love a pink house. I want to paint one and also live in one. I wish I could just.. build my own house. Sam and I could! In a different time and place.
Then I noticed the crowd of people. This makes me think of a bunch of frogs being boiled in a giant stockpot, so slowly that none of them realize whats happening until it’s too late.
As we all surely are. We are so slowly being boiled as the administration dismantles things, makes trouble, just snow blinds us every day.
And we don't even know how close we are to our own demise! what are we going to do?
image below: Predica di San Bernardino in Piazza San Francesco
(Preaching of Saint Bernardino in Piazza San Francesco)
by Sano di Pietro, created around 1445
Sat 25th
Strange, bad dreams lately. What’s happening to me?
Lost in a huge hotel
Art, strange art, finding success, seductive gallerists there.
Then, the worst, I was having dinner in Italy in this chaotic place, outside, tablecloth all ruffled up, way too many plates and glasses on the table. XXX was dead and his wife was at the table, a pretty brunette, and she was asking a lot of me, too much, and I acquiesced because I felt so much guilt and shame. She was asking me too many questions, like ‘why are you depressed?’ And I said, ‘I’m not depressed, I’m just curious."
Halloween
I like dressing up! Thinking about Baba Yaga, who she is. In Slavic folklore, she is many things. A witch, a crone, a forest spirit, a death-mother. Here’s what I think is really interesting, she is not simply “evil.” She is wild law. She is mischievous, pure magic, lives in the liminal, unconscious forest. She is often the hidden initiator. Here, let me explain.
Its interesting, in the story Vasilisa the Beautiful, she threatens to eat the heroine — but instead gives her impossible tasks: Sorting grains, Enduring fear, Working through the night. If the heroine succeeds (often with intuition, help from ancestral spirits, or inner wisdom), she leaves transformed — often carrying a skull lantern, a symbol of fierce knowledge.
This reminds me of Aphrodite testing Psyche with impossible tasks, or many sort of evilish figures in stories that test the hero and sort of invite the main character into step it up, to evolve, much like a mother in law (as Aphrodite is to Psyche) may sometimes do. She is the sand in the oyster, the irritant, that helps create the pearl.
4:44pm on the 12th of Nov
Weird day.
The actual portraits, the paintings, do they matter? It’s much more about the writing and the painting side by side. Just work and keep going, keep an even pace. Think Less. And try to catch the thoughts that make sense and illuminate the work somehow.
I’ll think of clothing and worldly things later. Now- just paint like a monk. Set all those things aside and be present, enjoy the work.
Nov 13th 2025
Yesterday was a strange cosmic reset and today I'm reaping the benefits. Come what may, I'm happy with the swan painting right now. I really needed the background to be this riot of abstract lines that look like someone painted it blindfolded. That's what it needed.
The swan looks flat and too… clear? I want it to be more subtle and dreamy, the hands too. I'll get there. But please Jessica, don't change the background. Maybe a transparent glaze over it but dont mess with that part anymore.
I’m so relieved, there it is, finally, like a silent bell finally ringing. I see it clearly, clear as a bell.
Monday
I would like to just be a reasonable human being, nothing fancy, but just to have a normal human vibe.
What is happening to me? Am I turning into a giant turtle?
At least I know these things:
1. I’m most excited and what… alive? Right before I get the thing I want, especially if I’ve wanted it for a long time.
2. Humans want to narrow things down into categories, but sometimes it doesn’t work that way. (Like Baba Yaga, she’s hard to define, neither good or evil, or both. What a messy character. But sometimes that’s the most interesting. and that’s nature, right?)
3. There is freedom within constraints, or self imposed rules, especially when the rules are flexible and can change and evolve. I feel this for myself and my child, we need to have rhythms and constraints to thrive within.
4. Empty space and doing nothing allows for more interesting things to happen. Don’t forget to meditate, ideas bubble up AND-
5. it creates this emotional buffer that’s a thousand times better than, say, coffee, when bad things happen.
5. I love material things but then I have to deal with them, and I ultimately prefer a visually serene space (without a lot of clutter) but I don’t want to spend all my time cleaning and organizing material objects. I want to spend the least time possible actually, I would rather create things and and dream, be ok with my head in the clouds.
6. Morphic space is real. That’s why Clemente went to India and New Mexico, to have space from the density of living in NYC.
7. Drink herbal tea at night and in the morning I’ll feel happier.
Water is emotion, anyway, water. Clouds, also a form of water. Ok.
8. Listen for that silent bell that rings clearly when the work is right. And sometimes the ways to get there may seem strange, or seem to take too long, or whatever, but that’s just the way it wants to unfold and it’s fine and interesting and it reflects in the work for those who can see it. Or maybe no one will see it but I will know. That’s what really matters, I will know.
Here’s an example of good and bad habits: I cycle around my paintings and get into this headspace of them never being finished. I could keep painting a collection of paintings forever. Could it be that I’m avoiding the responsibility of finishing them because that’s a different headspace and I don’t want to do that? It’s as different as a potter throwing a pot well but then having to learn how to fire a kiln to finish it. That’s not fair or fun!
So now I’m going to flex that muscle and finish all these paintings.
