DISCLAIMER: It’s a long one. I’ve uploaded quite a few photos, and I’ve kept them small under the assumption you’ll be able to click on them for a better view. Apologies, I have no self control.
5/7/24
I am half-moved out of my apartment and I’m flying across the country tomorrow. I am sitting in my stripped bed hunched over my laptop. I can’t stop watching pc horror game analysis videos. In the kitchen, my roommates are belting Chappell Roan bridges and chucking the remaining contents of our fridge into garbage bags. It’s a beautiful day out. I’ve been eating takeout leftovers for the last three days.
Lately the only way I can relax is if I sit with my heating pad against my back and go down a contemporary painting rabbit hole on Pinterest. (Sorry to my seminar professor.) Today I’m on the hunt for artists who know how to step between realities. I want to see paintings I could live in forever. Probably, this craving is made more intense by the highly disorganized transitional state I am existing within today.
Here are some paintings that feel like alternate dimensions by artists I’m foaming at the mouth over:
Andrew Cranston
‘Illustration of a Franz Kafka Story’ 2007 (ver. 1 and 2)
— Andrew Cranston’s work is a recent discovery for me. Something in his hand hints to me of a deep intuition and commitment to truth. Don’t ask me what that means.
’Gallerists’
— Oh my God. This painting is what the inside of my body looks like.
’School Meeting’
— Right now, I am sitting in the empty husk of my bedroom. The walls stripped, the matresses bare. The smoke alarm just went off, and it echoed off of every naked wall in the place. Only three more hours.
Peter Doig
‘Rainbow Wheel’ 1999
— This painting is one of my dreams.
‘Ski Jacket’ 1993
— This painting is my childhood.
— This painting is a mirror.
’Camp Forestia’
— This painting is everything everything everythign everthyg eveythng evmthng
Doron Langberg
‘Ian and Anthony’
— YES! Yay!!! So so good. This painting is sweetness and magic.
— Childhood best friend’s mother’s bedroom dresser. I know this room. I smell it!
— The Dungey Hoghole is what I would call this painting. I live here.
Jennifer Packer
… obviously
— Scale shift oh my God.
— The shape of so many memories.
Little Bits
Becca Kallem
— This painting isn’t exactly of an alternate dimension, but it feels like a close up into one. It feels real and yet filtered.
George Wesley Bellows, 1916
— Okay midwest!!
Fletcher Bishop Daniel Aldana
’A Promise of Morning’
— Oh my God.
5/8/24
For the past six(ish) months, I have been making dream paintings. I’m enjoying it immensely. It’s been consuming my entire mind. There’s just so much depth and space in this alternate dimension. I am ready to be lost within it. I have discovered the ability of my brain to invent entire universes. I have never been a daydreamer. Perhaps my imagination is underdeveloped. But this feels real somehow. I have the feeling that by engaging my unconscious in this way I am making something palpable and alive. I want to make something big. Something vast. It doesn’t have to be this. But if nothing else, this concept seems to be an exercise in focus and commitment. In believing in my own creative power.
I just finished a big painting of some dreams. Here it is with some supplemental studies. Sorry about the trash…
‘Dream Study 1’ (about five feet tall?) Oil and oil pastel on stretched canvas.
Miscellaneous dream studies in oil on canvas pad
5/8/24
My flight leaves in five hours. I must relax, but that’s easier said than done. The hard part is over! I am, of course, dreading lugging 125 pounds down the street by myself, but I can do it. By 2 am tonight, I’ll be tucked back in my cool, dark cave of a bedroom. Tomorrow morning I am going to drink real coffee.
I am trying not to think about painting. I am completely exhausted, but somehow I am brimming with ideas I am afraid to lose. I know if I give in to the creative frenzy right now, I will burn out immediately. I know my limits! For the next two days, I am solely a consumer. No new ideas. No new projects. No new commitments. Only horror movies, liquid IV, and maybe a new book to read.
In a few days, I’m sure I’ll have even more to say. For now, I am relaxing my focus. I need to stretch.
All love,
Lu