I am doing daily work for at least the month of June.  Along with that, I am participating in a daily audio blog #audiomo with the focus on my paint/drawing process.  Today's post covers the first of three works, with a 30 minute narration as I create these.  Please tune in either at itunes, anchor dot fm, soundcloud to hear the full commentary on my process.

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Per Kirkeby, Danish Painter passed yesterday.  It's hit me hard.  Not sure that I thought he'd be here forever or that I'd ever meet him myself, but it feels like a family member left the universe.

He has given so much to me in just viewing his work.  I was lucky enough to view a huge retrospective of his work while I was in Denmark for my artist residency in 2015.  At the time, I had just learned that he had publicly announced his end to painting, he had suffered a stroke.  That made me sad at the time, and anxious.  I did a few drawings while in Denmark around my thoughts of Kirkeby and painting, or giving it up.

Now he's gone, leaving quite a legacy.  One of the most prolific living artists I've discovered.

I will still look to his work to discover more and more about painting.  Reading his writings has been quite an eye opener for me, I have just the one book translated from Danish, and will look for more.

These are the remaining 4 of the series of 9 in the Denmark series.  I have to make a decision whether I continue into the next 2 (that i do have ideas for).  

I made some progress on the "last three", and also went into the Witches Grave/grace again.  Now i have 4 in progress again.  :)

I am a bit nervous, my portable drive won't open and it has all my images on it.  I know I know, dumb, but i moved stuff off the computer and forgot to back up the portable.  I hope it's only a cord, I'll see.

The podcast is sounds of the process today.  Paint goes on, paint comes off, scraping, mark making, more painting, it's all a part of the work.

Yesterday I took a walk in my neighborhood.  I saw a few things, and of course, my journalistic, documentarian self took photos of "what I noticed today".  #whatinoticedtoday 

The orange tree blossoms, so fragrant, caught my sensory eye.  Reminding me of my Farmor's backyard, and my dad.

I did a bit of a podcast today, remembering my father, he would be 80 today.

A few other images:

I realized today, that these three are the last of the original 9 pieces I began about 6-8 months ago.

Three came back from a show this week, and so all 9 are back in the studio.

I took my bold steps yesterday, making large changes again on each, leaving them again in a place I know they must be worked further to resolve.  Before, I could have just as well said they were finished, as nothing bothered me about them in particular, but they just didn't feel finished to me.

Now, the Egeskov piece feels more unresolved than the other two, which is a shift.  The Odense:HCA (Hans Christian Andersen) was feeling more unresolved before I took a mix of blues to it and the others.

Egeskov

Odense: HCA  (wip)

I feel a distinct need to start two more, fresh pieces in the series before going further, because I am still unsure of finishing work to be done on these.

I have been observing our continuous stream of refugees over the last several years, the Syrians, those from Libya, Yemen, Gaza . . . I weep.

Today I looked at some of the abstractions I did last year in  my "topical spaces" series.  Eerily still very present and relevant.  But today oddly, the three I looked at looked better in the upside down orientation.  So I am posting them here with some music in the "upside down" orientation.  As I look at them today, and like many in this series, they appear as "painting sketches" for future work.  For now I am naming them within the series:  Refugee Today 2 (above), Refugee Today 1 (middle) and Refugee Today 3 (bottom)  Somewhere in 2017.

The above piece is the nearly complete Ashøje:Witches Grave. I’ve been pondering changing the title to Witches Grace. Will see what it ends up like. 

Below:

Ashøje Forest. Nearly complete.