Well, here we are again. I suppose it's probably just as much work for you to read this as it is for me to write it, so I think we are in this together. It is a grey sky badly concealing a blinding silvery white one today. That is all I can see from my window. I do not have a view, except of the giant sky, which glares and blinds but does not reveal any drama. I miss dramatic skies, dark skies, dark and dramatic, we do not have those in California. The weather here does not suggest mystery, very rarely does it suggest mystery, which is regrettable because there is nothing better than the suggestion of mystery. This is what I am painting now, the suggestion of mystery without its revelation. When I decide to learn how to append photos, perhaps I will show you, but in the meantime, it is nice to have the mystery concealed. It is best when the mystery is almost fully concealed because then all is promise. All is promise.

I began this I-will-not-call-it-blog because I wanted to write again, and I wanted to bind my visual work together in a neat parcel of words—but there is nothing neat about what I do or even who I am, so I do not think that is going to happen, I do not think this is going to be in any sense of the word neat, nor will it ever resemble a parcel, except perhaps one that is torn to shreds and very stringy. It is my aim to tell you this, now, in this moment, it is my aim to tell you that I am sad because I have made this work for myself, this writing when I am now not so excited about writing as I was then, when I had the idea and then the damned impetus to begin writing about the process of making paintings, which, by the way, continues apace.

I may have stumbled—I may have stumbled on something, today I will see if that is true or not. I do not think it is wise, I have never thought it wise to reveal the process of creation before the thing is fully realized. As I have put it before, a thing cannot be known until it is known. That is not how I've put it in the past, I cannot remember how I once phrased it, although I've repeated the phrase so many times, the first time I wrote what I cannot at present remember was when I was living in Topanga Canyon after first moving to Los Angeles and I wrote a book, it was a novel that resembled a play and was the thing I wrote that made me realize that I was better suited to writing plays than novels, I did not like writing novels, I do not like details, I am not a detailed woman!, this novel was called "Will Trees Grow Out of My Mouth if I Am Good?" and it consisted mostly of dialogue, and it was in this novel where I said something about something having diminished capacity to withstand I guess something like scrutiny...I don't know! A thing needs to be careful not to reveal itself—no! A thing has no choice, it is the maker of that thing who must take care when the thing she is making is still unfinished, she must be very careful not to reveal it to the world, because...because an unfinished thing does not have the strength to withstand...something. I was excited, I thought I had it. My mind does not work as well as it used to. There is a lot to tell you! There is very much and very much to tell you, but I cannot tell you anything about what I hope to achieve today in my work, for that would be putting my potential achievement at great risk. I worry. I feel that even saying that has put it at risk, that this words business seeks too soon to encapsulate what is far too weak to withstand encapsulation, what will be crushed to fine dust in the act of it, in the act of trying to encapsulate what is as yet very weak! There will be pictures, at some point, I am sure, but I do not know how to append them yet. If you have made it this far through this ragged post, with its ragged syntax, you are stalwart and I like you. You will need to be, I must tell you that now, I must give you that information. You will need to be stalwart, for this is how it will be.

Trying to get beyond the image while keeping to the image. Mostly this feels like an impossible thing to achieve, yet that's what makes it interesting, the uncertainty of its even being possible, what I am spending time and money and my body on, my shoulder, my hand—my hands!  I am at war with image, with the figure, yet entwined with it because I am in love with it, with the figure, with the story the figure tells, and with an outcome that surprises me and entrances me with its figurative story and capacity to surprise. I am, every day, practically every day it feels as though I am at war with myself, for it is my deepest impulse to tell a story and to use the figure to do so, and I am tearing at myself in my attempts to tear away my reliance on the figure. Why? Why do I do this? Why not just embrace the figure? Oh, but I cannot! For that would be too easy, and easy bores me, easy bores me, I am in love with the great wild violent wingbeat of ambition.

I guess this is today. There will be something comprehensive at some point. I think we can be fairly sure of that. I think we can be fairly sure that whatever today is, tomorrow will be something else entirely, and, if not tomorrow, then another day. For it is certain that another day will be unlike this day. I do not believe—sometimes it does not seem as though anything is certain in this world, it is a profound sense of uncertainty I carry with me from minute to minute, so I suppose it is something that I can be certain that on another day, I may present you with something more comprehensive than I have done today, which is this. On the other hand, that is speculation, not unrelated to uncertainty and hardly like certainty at all.

One day I will tell you everything. I am many years into this, into telling you everything, but there is always more to tell, so it is not possible to tell it now. But I will say this, for it is important to know to hold my words in context: I am a painter. I am concerned with painting, with its meaning and purpose, and I am concerned with locating meaning and purpose in a life deliberately shaped to accomodate my colossal impulse to make art. It is not always easy to find, I do not know that I ever find it, but words have a way of creating the things or ideas that they signify, and so—