The Year Inside Journal Entries

1 March 2020 - Someone sent me a video on the coronavirus, and it is frightening as hell. It’s from Canada, so there are at least some facts in it.

3 March 2020 - The U.S. Administration is calling the coronavirus a hoax. Now people have stopped drinking Corona beer or buying Chinese food. It feels like the world has gone mad.

5 March 2020 - The coronavirus is wreaking havoc in Washington State. Half of its residents are staying home from work.

6 March 2020 - Unsettling day in the studio. I had to leave before I ruined things.

7 March 2020 - News about the coronavirus is worsening. It’s close to home now. Saratoga has reported cases. I read today that around 43,000 people die each year from the regular flu. We aren't ready to see how many people will die from this.

8 March 2020 - I'm not sure how we will get through this. My doctor feels that it should abate in about 3 months. Just reading about it makes me sick. In the meantime, it is difficult to be fully prepared.

I'm going to slow down and take a breath and clean and organize everything because that will soothe my anxiety and give me a chance to think. I've been working straight out for weeks and I'm running on empty.

9 March 2020 - I canceled my trip to my exhibition in Florida. I really wanted to go, but when I heard reports that they have quarantined entire cities in Italy, I can imagine that the virus might have a major outbreak here or in Florida; and I could get stuck between places.

12 March 2020 - Spent today doing my Armageddon shopping. Hopefully I'll get some money soon. With these scares about the pandemic and the plummeting stock market, I'm very concerned about getting paid by my galleries. But I'm getting some good ideas for work, so hopefully, we will all survive, and people will still be interested in art.

I have curtailed all social activities. I think it is the only way to slow the virus.

13 March 2020 - I'm slowly getting prepared for the virus. I've canceled all meetings and parties. I've started a deep cleaning of the apartment. I've bought supplies and have cooked some meals ahead. I wear gloves when I'm not in the studio. When I see people, we stand far apart. Many schools are closed. All the museums. Most sporting events.

15 March 2020 - Things are changing rapidly. This daily list of closings is unsettling. Bars and restaurants now. Delivered meals only. How can they survive?

Stayed home today; no cars came by. On my daily walk, saw only one car. Basically, the country is shut down. I think everyone has decided to self-quarantine for the next two weeks in the hopes that the virus can be stopped in its tracks, but I don't think that will be long enough. Some people are going to be incapable of being stuck at home for two weeks.

18 March 2020 - We must imagine ourselves on a war footing. You get by with what you have, and you continue to do what is important to you. None of this sounds bad to me. Art for art's sake. Of course, there is fear about the potential for making money.

The market has dropped 10,000 points, and with no work, I think just about everyone is going to liquidate whatever they have in the market. And boom, we're done. Complete chaos. So, what then?

20 March 2020 - I lost it today. I was not able to sleep last night, and I got up exhausted and felt like I was walking through molasses. I don't think anyone is feeling productive.

21 March 2020 - Stayed home today. Read more about the virus. It’s more dangerous than we first imagined. It’s been recommended that when you come in from the outside world, you should remove your clothes and take a shower. I'm debating whether it would be OK to go to the studio. I work alone and I keep gloves on as I go to my space. I just don't know.

26 April 2020 - Didn't see anyone today. It's a bit lonely. But I felt OK since I was engaged with my work.

27 April 2020 - Still no stimulus check. There is a new round of PPP, but no way of knowing if I can reapply.

No word on any of the art grants I applied for, except that the relief grant went into its second of five phases. I think the money is just for the most desperate.

2 May 2020 - It's around day 54 of isolation and things are beginning to break down. People can't stand being at home anymore. They don't get that it isn't any safer for us to be out there. There are still over 300 people dying a day in New York City.

3 May 2020 - Really, I need to concentrate on making the most compelling work possible, and then I need to get it in front of as many people as possible. But what I need most is to dig deep and figure out exactly what paintings I want to do.

7 May 2020 - Today I helped direct cars during a giant food distribution in our local community. Farmers have been destroying their food because they can't get it to market, and people are going hungry because they're not making any money. These large distributions are being arranged by the Salvation Army and food banks and other organizations working together. We only had one nasty reaction in the parking area. Looking back on it, I feel that this guy who wouldn't pull his car forward was out of control of so many things in his life that he was not going to relinquish this one thing that he thought he could control. But otherwise, it ran smoothly.

15 May 2020 - Having been able to pay some of my major bills ahead has given me breathing room. I decided to be kind with myself and when I can't get traction on a painting just clean the studio or something; ease into it. Or if I just want to play with known territory, then so be it. I immediately found the thing I wanted to do.

Today I found a photo I took this winter of frost on my studio window that ended up looking like dots on a black field. I'm going to attempt to paint it. There are so many dots in this painting, I'm afraid that the structure might get lost, but I won't know until I try, and I've been wanting to do this for ages.

I've been thinking a lot about my work and what the elements are that I come back to repeatedly. And nature is part of it, reflected light, highly detailed, which is ironic as I don't really like to look at highly detailed work, but this seems to be the lane that I'm in.

18 May 2020 - Got a good start on the Frost painting. This is either going to work or it isn't, and I won't know until it's done.

20 May 2020 - Great day painting. Can't wait to finish this painting and see it done.

21 May 2020 - I'm increasingly excited about seeing this painting finished and doing another one. It is demanding because of the need to keep the marks consistent. But I love what I have done so far. It’s very reminiscent of Aboriginal dot paintings. But ironically, it’s also a completely representational painting.

23 May 2020 - New death toll: 100,000 deaths today.

26 May 2020 - Finally finished the Frost painting. Now I'm working on another smaller one. But this one is predominantly blue and has different modulations. I might want to do a much larger one, maybe on a 65 x 94-inch canvas. There is a play in scale to get the small dots to perform on a large surface. These works just feel like the right paintings for now, when I want to hold on to every moment and let things change incrementally.

28 May 2020 - I'm working on the new Frost painting. It is slow going. I won't have a feel for how it will look for a while, but I like the effect so far. It's going to be interesting to see if I can pull it off. There are other images I want to try. And I really want to do a huge one. That will take fortitude.

31 May 2020 - Frost painting is still slow going and it’s going to take a long time before I’m able to see if it looks like anything. Seems like what I’m doing now is underpainting. I do like working on these paintings, but as always, I am learning about them as I go.

6 June 2020 - Thinking a lot about “Frost on Window.” Wanting to expand that imagery. Can't worry about it too much. Only need to do the next one, which I'm ready for. Seeing things in a new way makes me look for things in a new way -- and so it evolves. I'm taking a deep dive back into painting things that are abstract but also complete representations of something real.

9 June 2020 - Started the large Frost painting. I really must concentrate to sustain the quality of the marks and some spots will have to be overpainted because I am not getting full coverage. But it is exciting to begin to see it unfold. I painted about one-ninth of the painting today in 7 1/2 hours.

I'm excited about this painting. But I'm going to have to keep doing things to bring in money. Tomorrow I'll put in my loan and apply for another grant.

10 June 2020 - I just need to continue to concentrate. I worked until 6:00 pm today, and it is a long day when painting tiny dots with a brush the size of an eyeliner.

15 June 2020 - Lots of work on the Frost painting. Will probably take two more days to get the first go-through done, and then I'll need to go back to highlight certain areas. I hope I can make this painting work and I hope I can do the others I have in mind because if I can figure out how to paint them, they could be amazing.

28 June 2020 – Couldn’t sleep at all last night. Worked on the large Frost painting and I think that it is almost done. Probably plenty of tweaks are needed.

2 July 2020 - The year has been filled with so much death. Both close friends and with thousands of strangers. I think about it every day as I mask up to leave the house. Then for a bit I start to feel safe, and then there is another outbreak. This is going to linger with us for a long time.

12 August 2020 - I often think about how people resonate with a particular artwork. There are pieces of art that I know objectively are good, but I don't resonate with them. This means of connecting to a work of art is, I believe, more pronounced in the performing arts, especially music. We often have a very physical response to music that resonates within us.

I remember an experience watching a jazz performer, who completely blew me away to the point where at one moment, it felt as though everyone in the room pixelated and was floating like colored confetti, only smaller, in the air. I think my new paintings are about that experience. It's about the moment when we no longer cohere. And we are resuspended in space like so many particles of dust. It's a literal breaking of the veil.

13 August 2020 - In my new paintings I'm interested in dimensionality. And pixilation. I like the idea of having the image billow off the surface.

If I could describe the painting I want to do, it would be mesh draped over a colored ground with confetti on it. Or draped gold lame with some other metallic ingredients in it. Mesh might be worth pursuing. Maybe I should knit some threads and drape them. But also, the folded paper pieces might work, especially with the ones with a glittery surface. Or maybe I should play with the space blanket with a view to draping it and again reflecting other colors. Before I hadn't really wanted the paintings to look like fabric, but now it seems like a good idea.

14 August 2020 - Thinking more about the drapery paintings. Maybe I’ll order some sequined fabric. I seem to want to put contrary things together-- folds, drapery, dimensionality, dissolving, meticulously painted, dissolved into pixels. Problem is, where to find those qualities? Can I achieve what I want in paint? Of course, several other of my paintings have gone down this road: “Tarp Two” and “The Tablecloth”, but I want to do this, and also let it look completely abstract.

16 August 2020 - I abandoned the painting I was working on. Trying a different version. Unfortunately, I have to be pretty far along before I know whether or not it's working.

23 August 2020 - Tonight I received the sequins fabric I ordered. I started photographing it. I think it is going to be fantastic for a large painting, especially since it can reflect the color around it. I think I'm going to love the mark-making involved with it. It will also be interesting if I can achieve some sort of dimensionality as the Renaissance painters did with their drapery drawings. I like the idea of breaking the picture plane, having something appear to be glittering and dimensional, but also abstract and unrecognizable. Totally up my alley.

26 August 2020 - Painting didn't go well today. Nothing seems right with this painting. The paint just isn't going on as I want. I think I might abandon it. Perhaps I'll get a feeling for it again, but for now I am excited about the idea of trying a sequins painting.

2 September 2020 - Worked all day on the first sequins painting, but I'm not sure it has the right impact. I think I need to paint the whole thing and then repaint it. But it's OK. I knew that these would require some figuring out.

There is so much I want to experiment with. It's going to take time because I've created this difficult imagery, but when I gain mastery over it, I think I'll be able to do some interesting stuff, but the paint and the values must be right -- all of it.

3 September 2020 - The only thing that matters is the work. I am struggling through this new painting not knowing if I can create the impact that I want, but that has been true almost every time I have taken off in a new direction. I'm constructing now, laboriously building one piece of the painting at a time. Once that is done, I can start painting with abandon.

15 September 2020 - I barely listen to the news anymore. California, Oregon, and Washington are in flames -- the level of the Australian fires last year.

22 October 2020 - I've been thinking about my new paintings and where I want to go with them. I love the detail in the frost paintings and how you can see frost or the universe. Of course, I am looking for other ways of doing that and I have found it – a sequins image could work. I feel that these need to be super detailed to create that effect.

28 October 2020 - People are voting in large numbers -- 50% of all votes have already been cast in early voting.

3 November 2020 - I didn’t stay up and watch the results. It is looking iffy for Biden. I can't stand the direction our country is moving in. It makes me despair. It's exhausting to live under Trump. I think I will go into major hibernation.

5 November 2020 - We still don't know who the President is. Biden might pull ahead of Trump tonight in Pennsylvania, but I don't know if he will be ahead enough for them to call it. And I'm not sure if Pennsylvania would put him over the top.

6 November 2020 - Still no new President, although the path to victory for Biden seems likely. Trump has come undone and continues to try to stir violence and revolt, but not even Fox News is going for it.

Time to get onto a new painting. The election has been exhausting for all of us. Can't wait until this nightmare is over.

Joe Biden is as calm as a sleeping pill. And that is what we need right now.

7 November 2020 - We finally have a new President. We will have to wait until January 20th for Biden to assume office and it's going to be a very dangerous time for the nation.

13 November 2020 – New US Covid death toll – 160,000+

16 November 2020 – At the grocery store today the shelves are still not full. We're really in the darkest hour of the COVID virus, or we will be next month.

We're all hunkering down for COVID’s second surge. We basically need to be in lockdown for a month. I'm hoping that since I work alone and live alone, I will be able to continue to work.

17 November 2020 - COVID is raging out of control.

18 November 2020 - I'm mostly doing a news blackout. We've had a quarter million deaths from COVID, and Trump has washed his hands of it.

20 November 2020 - COVID is overwhelming most of the country. I am anxious, unable to sleep, unable to eat.

I need to paint!

24 November 2020 - COVID cases are surging. There are 400 in Washington County, my corner of upstate New York. The hospitals in the Midwest are completely overwhelmed. It is feeling very frightening because no one is staying home. We shouldn't be out at all.

3 December 2020 - The virus situation is becoming drastic. Many hospitals around the country report being on the point of collapse. It's making people feel crazy. Every other western country gave their people significant amounts of money so they could stay home. Not us. It is going to be a weird couple of months. I am guessing that there might be a vaccine for people my age by the end of March.

10 December 2020 - I'm feeling very weird. But I have been quite isolated this week and there is all this scary stuff going on with the election, with Trump acting like a madman.

16 December 2020 - I'm having a lot of trouble with the sequins painting. Not sure I'll continue with it, but I probably need to use magnifying glasses. I'll give it another go on Friday.

18 December 2020 - Feeling insecure. It will pass, but it is uncomfortable now. And of course, I haven't really seen anyone in a couple of days.

28 December 2020 - Painted all day on the sequins painting. I finally dropped into the zone and felt I was back. I can start to see the painting now and know what it needs. Such tiny detail. I must abandon myself to it to be able to paint it. But I was able to work on it for about 6 hours without interruptions. It was a good run.

29 December 2020 - I'm finally getting to a place where the sequins painting has a gestalt. I wanted the painting to seem as though it is Nothing. Nothing going on here. But then you see all the vibrating energy underneath.

Been reading about Monet again. I have come to feel that in unexpected ways we have been after the same thing. We work in a similar way in that we observe nature and then set up both an artistic and almost scientific exploration to discover something new. I think his popularity has obscured the nature of his pursuits. There is his idea of painting the “envelope.” By that I feel he means that which envelops him, the atmosphere that is between himself and his subject. Monet merges with his subject. It is the edge that he pursues – the furthest reaches of his investigations. Just as Philip Glass, the composer, wanted to find the sound on the edge of sound; Monet wanted to find the equivalent of that in paint.

30 December 2020 - Wonderful day painting. Finished the small sequins painting and completely repainted the large metallic one I had started. I went back to my photos and found one that had very simple qualities. Not a lot of drama, but it has a whisper of a color at the bottom. It has other things that I like -- atmosphere and illusion.

I love that with this size piece of cloth I can make so many different images and compositions. I'm really looking for a new vocabulary for the paintings.

COVID is raging everywhere. New York still has the most COVID deaths in the country. I'm not sure if the city is up to last spring’s levels. But I fear the city exodus has brought a lot of COVID here. There have been two more deaths in Washington County and thousands elsewhere. It's time to go into complete lockdown again.

31 December 2020 - End of the year and everybody is saying “Good riddance,” but for me it was a good year. I did some good paintings, although not too many. I redid my website. It's been a little lonely, but not too bad since I have reconnected with some people.

Republicans objecting to the 2020 Electoral College vote. I'm very worried about the coming week.

6 January 2021 - 1 AM. I had to stay up and watch the election returns in Georgia. Warnock has claimed victory but, at the moment, it seems to be 50/50. Osloff hasn't claimed victory, but it seems to be trending Democratic. We may not have a final vote for a couple of days because of the yet uncounted military votes.

Tomorrow is going to be a clown show. Over 100 representatives and 10 senators are contesting the electoral vote.

Good day painting. Although it will still be awhile before the painting takes shape. It might be difficult to get the effect that I'm after. I want the bottom portion of the painting to appear to glow.

11:00 PM. Osloff and Warnock both managed to win their Senate seats. But then that news was completely overtaken by Trump's attempted coup. He had his people rally in DC and then he stoked them up, repeating over and over again that he won in a landslide, and he told them to storm the capitol, which they did with great ease and almost no interference from the police. One woman died. We don't know who she was or what exactly were the circumstances. I think Capitol buildings all over the nation were breached. Twitter suspended Trump's account for six hours. There's been talk that he should be impeached again immediately, but it's all about timing now. He was finally prevailed upon to calm the protesters -- but he just kept saying that he won the election in a landslide.

7 January 2021 - Things continue to be wild. Trump finally made a statement that he concedes. He sounded perfectly normal and presidential in his concession speech. Biden won and now there must be a peaceful transfer of power. But Trump continues to say that the election was stolen. He sounds completely off the rails. The fact that he could make both statements makes me doubt his sanity. We’re living in the twilight zone.

On other fronts, a good day painting. The painting is unwieldy and difficult.

8 January 2021 - We're all distraught. It is becoming clear that Trump had every expectation of overthrowing the government and that supremacist groups are the greatest threat to our government. And it seems that the police are also complicit in this. It's been reported, but not verified that off duty cops were among those attacking the capitol. Not verified yet.

I can't wait for all this to be in our rearview mirror.

10 January 2021 - I still feel shell shocked. It's becoming more and more obvious that what happened January 6th was planned. People were armed. They were wearing Kevlar. They had plastic cuffs so they could take hostages. They had Molotov cocktails in a car nearby. They constructed a beam with a noose on it. A member of Congress let them in the back door. They were calling for the hanging of Pence and death to Pelosi. The Republicans still would not wear a mask when sheltering in place with others, and since then a vulnerable Congress person tested positive for COVID.

Meanwhile, the virus is totally out of control. More than 4000 people are dying daily in this country. In another month we will have lost half a million people

In the studio I'm working on the large sequins painting still struggling for the effect that I want. These things often don't come right away. I'll have to just keep working.

11 January 2020 - News about the siege of the capitol dominates the airwaves. It's becoming more and more evident that this was planned.

12 January 2021 - Trump was impeached for a second time today.

18 January 2021 -I have been painting but nothing has been going well. Today I completely painted over the piece I have been working on for weeks. I think I realized the problem. I want the painting to have an insane amount of tiny detail. I need to do the piece on something smaller so that it can keep the detail. I will try that tomorrow.

23 January 2021 – New York City is running out of vaccines. One in three people in California have COVID. We have around 450,000 deaths so far. Proportionally more than any other western country.

24 January 2021 - I’m at sixes and sevens in the studio, unable to get into my work.

25 January 2021 - Finally, I had an OK day painting. I went back to a frost painting that I stopped working on months ago.

28 January 2021 - I've been having so much trouble working.

I took down the frost painting that I was working on. I realized that I had no connection to it. That's probably why it's been so difficult to paint. When going through my photos, I came across a picture I took of a landscape off the TV. It was a weird gray-blue-green color that you get on TV. I cropped it as a long horizontal. It's quite a depressing photo. Reminds me very much of the gray days we lived through here, but I am very drawn to it. It's mysterious and complex. So, I'm going to go for it.

As a subject and color, I know it's not popular, but it has a meaning for me, a soul. No rules, just go for it. What I realized when I prepped the canvas was that I had a connection to the image and when that happens you have to strike. You can't let it pass by.

I'm also getting other messages about pieces, and I need to heed them. I'm not quite sure how to go about this painting, but I think I need to start with a dark ground. I also need to spend some time concocting the color because it is very specific.

29 January 2021 - Started on my TV painting: trees in fog. I know that I will have to paint the whole thing once and then paint it again. I'm hoping I will be able to get the kind of twilight dream space, the kind of otherworldly quality that happens on a winter’s day.

2 February 2021 - I think I have found my way back into the new painting. This makes me feel happy and balanced.

4 February 2021 - I'm very insecure about the way I'm painting this painting. Falls apart close-up and pulls together at a distance. I'll get there, I'm just not allowing for the time that it takes to get there.

5 February 2021 - I'm quite sure that what I'm doing is no way to make a painting. But I've made some rather good paintings working like this. It looks like such a mess. I'm anxious to see how the painting will look done, but it will take ages. I just hope that I stay connected.

7 February 2021 - Now I think most of us feel as though we're in a place of suspended animation, unable to move forward. Some of us are trying to muscle through, but it's very hard. It's partly why I'm very proud of getting a new grant out and getting my website done and doing at least a few good paintings.

8 February 2021 - I like the painting. I can't wait until the whole thing starts to feel cohesive so I can see if I can go for the overall feeling that I want. I don't feel at all that I have a clue about what I'm doing. I make rules about how it must be approached, and when they don't produce what I want I make other rules. I don't want this painting to be a scene or a landscape. I want it to be a mood. And an atmosphere. More internal than external.

10 February 2021 - Each day I think I'm reinventing how to paint.

14 February 2021 - Now that the impeachment is behind us, I wonder what will happen?

17 February 2021 - It felt amazing working today. The first day I felt like myself since the election.

22 February 2021 - I want the light to seem as though it emanates from inside the painting toward the viewer. And I find when I paint, even when I am making drops on the canvas, I'm always looking to see how that pulls the light forward.

My nature is that I see things in terms of how they are defined by light and color. That may be why I am interested in resonance -- how these components make me feel and where they take me internally. In that way, my reaction to a painting is more akin to someone's reaction to music. The way music resonates with you has as much to do with who you are in the moment as it has with the music. And just as we can travel or meditate while listening to music, I do both when I paint and when I look at painting.

25 February 2021 - Weird day painting. My painting felt like a math puzzle. I'll let it sit for a while and see what it says to me.

28 February 2021 – Got my first vaccine today. I felt real joy getting it.

6 March 2021 - I had an interesting epiphany this morning. When I was an undergraduate at Bennington I made a piece that transformed the space of the room. I covered a wall and the radiator below it with black plastic. Then I spray painted part of it with silver paint. What happened though was that the wall was transformed. You could not really tell where the surface was. The surface appeared permeable.

As simple as this piece was, it really worked. What is interesting to me about this now is that these are exactly the problems or propositions I'm making with my paintings today -- something that transforms a sense of the surface, that changes space through suggestion, but that also gives the sense that it is something you can pass through.

I'm realizing that certain things have been in me from the beginning. It’s just taken years to recognize which of the things coming out of me are mine and which are sent by someone else’s muse.

12 March 2021 - Worked on my TV winter landscape painting. Fingers crossed that I will be able to finish it without messing it up.

14 March 2021 - Submitted for PPP loan forgiveness.

17 March 2021 - I spent the afternoon painting a picture of a bare mountain in Iceland, but it has a complete otherworldly feeling about it because it was photographed off the TV screen. It is not only flat but also a strange non-color. I like it because it feels like a suicide, or it has the feeling of, “How did I end up here”? I also like it because it is moody. I like that it carries an emotional component. A friend said that it reminded him of Richter's Bader Meinhoff series. I agree, but it makes sense since both were likely to be taken from flat screens.

I continue to feel alarmed by how my work bounces all over the place, but in this case, I'm pursuing something I've been interested in for a while. Things that are not what they seem to be. Things that show you that you are perceiving in a way that is different than normal, in other words, I am painting a representation of a video representation of a landscape.

The thing I'm trying to use as my guiding light right now is inspiration. I have many intellectual ideas about what I should do. But what I want to do now is only work on the things that I feel strongly moved to do. I might enter the studio thinking I am going to do one thing but be pulled to paint something else entirely. I also wanted to paint this painting as fast as possible one day wet into wet. It may need some modification, but I wanted this to be as direct as possible.

18 March 2021 - I did a painting today of trees around a lake in winter from a television screen. Again, it looks a bit Richter-like, but I wanted to make it. When I feel like doing a painting, I'm just going to do it. I can sort out the meaning of it later. The first heavy winter painting needs some work. They probably all need some work, but that is the most obvious one. I think I need to give things a little rest, clean the studio and gather the pieces I want to paint over.

There is some feeling of hope as people start getting vaccinated.

Cuomo was the only voice of leadership we had when Covid started. People forget that no one really knew how to contain this. Many people have trouble believing it was as contagious as it was. We had trouble getting reliable information. It was terrifying.

19 March 2021 - Last night I dreamt I was holding a person wrapped like Lazarus in my arms. I thought there isn't much left of this person because his legs were so thin. He was alive, but the swaddling had caught fire. I moved him away from the fire and snuffed out the fire by beating it down with something to smother it. Then I looked at the face of the person. It was Jesus Christ. I looked at him and he at me, and he said, I love you and I said, I love you. Very strange.

Tomorrow is my second vaccine.