The Artist, acrylic on canvass by Tammy Vitale

The flash photo is clearer, but the nonflash photo, though blurry, is truer to the colors. (I’m having a terrible time with getting the edges right because I’m using the view finder on my broken camera.  Sigh).

The Artist, is today’s work for One a day month.  It’s still wet, can you tell?   I’m not only loving the stretching it’s making me do, but also getting new ideas forming for clay.  The activities inform each other – and I’m loving that.  I know in the long run that I’m moving toward  a long piece, like 3 women, for the wall – something that I can do many different variations on, much like my torsos.  I’m just not yet sure of the execution and am not currently dressed for clay work having been out to vote this morning.  (You have voted today, right?  Let’s move back toward a country of hope, not a country of division!)  Not to say I can’t change my clothes, or that I won’t, because I am jonesing to find out if the image in my head can transfer into clay.  But hey, my watercolors and watercolor paper ordered last week just arrived and I might have to sit down and play with that some.   Because my big show at Joie de Vivre in Cambridge (MD) is loaded in as of yesterday (and it all fit in my car!  with the backseat out of course – but that’s great!) and this week is a kind of lull.  Saturday I’m dropping work at A Step Above in Berlin, MD, and then doing the reception and probably staying over somewhere  for the night in Camridge.  I have no  business driving at night on unfamiliar roads – can’t see as well as I used to.

Trying old things again (painting), informed by years off, can be really fun.  I am definitely scrounging for paints though (ok, I should have ordered some acrylics too, but I can always go back and do that).  I really wanted some white and don’t have a drop.  But I have a bunch of stretched canvass I can use:  16 x 24.  I really wanted a 24 x 36 for today and thought I had some somewhere but can’t lay my hands on them.  There’s another thing I need to do:  rehang all the house’s artwork, and bring my books and other stuff back in from the shed now that the house isn’t going on the market any time soon (april maybe).

It feels good to have this space open up where I can play again with all kinds of art with no need for it to turn out in any particular way.  Who knows what will come of it?!

thought for the day:  VOTE!  VOTE!  VOTE!