Sunday, September 21st, 2025

Tomorrow morning I’m going to cut all the panels and start stretching canvas over each one. 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 time, and when they are finished, each panel is like a cake or a little glazed petitfour, a delicious object. It will be worth it.

And then I’ll prime them with this really beautiful soft grey ground like the Michaël Borremans portrait here. I love the way the paint sits on this warm grey.

Monday September 22nd

My task is to stay focused and I am, mostly. Last night was fun, dinner at Bad Animal with friends. I found some great books too, including a book of paintings by Francesco Clemente at Mary Boone Gallery in 2007. Good book store! Luka is a scientist from Croatia and thinks in this old world way, stoically, especially when he talks about Fascism. The way everyone talked about how it will unfold here makes me feel afraid, like the ground is crumbling away under my feet.

On top of that, the earthquake in the middle of the night was scary. 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.

I’m walking the dark streets of Manhattan with Tessa and her friends after the talk at the Ganesha Temple in Soho. It’s storming and balmy, the kind of weather that makes my hair frizzy and ferns glow, the air is charged. I remember missing Anne and feeling like an orphan, so fragile, wearing her heavy old Barbour jacket, armor over my silk dress, like it was the only thing keeping me from shattering into a million pieces. It's ridiculous, who knows that was happening with my heart that night.

Then an invisible link to Kori’s story about running into Francisco Clemente, so many years ago. He was riding his bike down Broadway, so early that no no one was around, 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, without words. He knew this man, knew his work, just like I do. He’s my favorite artist, I would have lost it! I’m thinking about Clemente’s work so much now as my own unfolds, how I want to paint, and how 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 sort of can't get away from these memories (could this be because it's boring here, in my real life?) Francesco Clemente was born in Naples, lived in Soho, and made these pilgrimages to New Mexico and India to get space and recharge and make work. We are all drawn to the same places. I dwell there although my body is here and I can’t come back. yet.

Can I paint? Can I get out of my own way? It's Monday and on Wednesday it will be October. I should be PAINTING but I can't. Today I’m tired and my soul is just swirling all over time and space, with Tessa and Kori and Clemente, not really willing to settle back into my body. How do I work with this state? Just let it unfurl as it will and hope that eventually my spirit will deign to come back to my body and then paint when it does, I guess?

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 to high hell… 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. Maybe all this is a veiled wish for the quality and process of my 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.

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, sometimes making big rangy loops until I can tell that it’s right, somehow.

I am interested in painting well. I’m interested in painting faces and hands like sparkling jewels coming out of the darkness.

Tuesday September 30th

Why can’t it be October already?

I’m distracted and excited but I have to stay focused, there’s so 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 think I 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 hundred 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.

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. its peaceful, also the shape of, say, 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

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.

I love the idea of the pink house

And maybe a bunch of frogs being boiled in a giant stockpot

As we surely are. We are so slowly being boiled with the acts of the administration, slowly slowly

we don't even know how close we are to our own demise, all us little froggies.

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, skulls and rocks and acorns, really all the things I like. A raggedy kitchen witch in her apron and a broom. Also things i like and also this is me, every day. She is nature, both good and evil.

Actually wait, I don't think I would describe nature as containing good and evil, that's not right. Maybe better to say that there exist rhythms and harmonies that are bigger than what humans can define in simple ways, it's not a duality like that. Wolves have sharp teeth and will eat little animals, glowing eyes in the dark. That’s their nature.

No, its just not good and evil, that's not the spectrum. Within all the complexity, there’s is a sort of a trickster archetype that exists, that I like, maybe that’s what I’m thinking of. What’s the drive of a trickster? And of course magic, above all. Play, a little horror. My favorite part is her hut that occasionally lifts itself up on chicken feet and moves to another place in the forest. I wish I could just dress up as her hut! That would be weird!

Sometimes, similarly, I wonder if humans are good or evil, but maybe, again- that’s not the right question. We are governed by these big looping forces that drive us, just the same way the forces of nature move us this way and that way. Or maybe evil is real, I don’t know.

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. Chaos to order to chaos again. 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 don’t know anything, I mean really.

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. )

3. There is freedom within constraints, or self imposed rules, especially when the rules are flexible and can change and evolve.

4. Empty space and doing nothing allows for more interesting things to happen. Dont 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. I want to make stuff and have my head in the clouds and basically do anything else.

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.

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.

Some journal entries from last fall

a short essay about a donkey