1 March 2020
Someone sent me a video on the Coronavirus and it is frightening as hell. It was from the Canadians so there were at least some facts in it we can hang onto.

3 March 2020
Trump is calling the coronavirus a hoax and people have stopped drinking Corona beer or buying Chinese food. The world has gone completely mad.

5 March 2020
The Coronavirus is wreaking havoc in Washington state. Half the state is staying home from work. It's making everyone crazy. We have a lying nutbag in the White House who is disseminating lies.

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. Saratoga has two cases. I read today that around 43,000 people die a year from 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 cancelled my trip to the show in Florida. I really wanted to go for the exhibition, but when I hear reports that they have quarantined whole cities in Italy, I just could imagine that the virus might have a major outbreak here or in Florida, and I could get stuck between places.

12 March 2020
I spent today doing my Armageddon shopping and doing a thorough cleaning of the kitchen and bathroom. 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. 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 activity. 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. The Boston Marathon is postponed until the fall. Most places are asking people to work from home.

15 March 2020
Things have changed rapidly. All the schools, colleges, universities. have closed here and they're going to remain closed. They're going to remote learning. Bars and restaurants have been told to deliver meals only.

I stayed home today, and no cars came by. I also walked a mile or two and 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 have to imagine ourselves on a war footing. You get by with what you have, and you continue to do what is important to you. Art for art's sake. None of this sounds bad to me. Of course, there is fear about 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
I stayed home today. Reading about the virus, it is more dangerous than we imagined at first. They recommend that when you come in, 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
I 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 you must reapply.

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

2 May 2020
It's around day 54 of isolation and things are beginning to breakdown. 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. These numbers mean nothing to these people. They think they are immune. How little they know.

3 May 2020
Really, I need to concentrate on making the most compelling work possible, and then I need to get them in front of as many people as I can. But what I most need to do 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. 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 this thing I wanted to do. Today I found a photo I took this winter of frost on a 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
I got a good start to 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 very 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. Of course, it is very reminiscent of Aboriginal dot paintings. But ironically, once again this is a completely representational painting.

23 May 2020
We have hit 100,000 deaths today.

26 May 2020
Finished the Frost painting. I'm working on another smaller one. But this one is predominantly blue and has different modulations. I might want to do one more really large one. There is a play in scale to get the small dots to perform on a large surface. They just feel like the right paintings for now when I want to hold on to every moment and let things change incrementally.

27 May 2020
Spent all day on new Frost painting. It is very slow going. My sense is that I need to lay it all in and then I must completely rework it once I have done that. I have some interesting ones that I would like to try, but I'm not sure that I can replicate the quality of light.

28 May 2020
I'm working on the new Frost painting. It is slow going and I won't have a feeling 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 others I want to try. And I really want to do a huge one. That will take fortitude.

31 May 2020
Worked on the new Frost painting. It is very slow going and is going to take a long time before I'm going to see if it looks like anything. I think I still must do more to create the right way to apply the paint. I figured that what I am doing now is going to be underpainting. I do like working on these paintings, but again I am learning about them as I go. I need to find some bamboo skewers or sticks and try painting with them. Or maybe just some twigs.

2 June 2020
Great Day painting. I am almost through with the first layer of the new painting. I think I could finish that tomorrow and figure out where I go from there. I still do not have the sense of how it will look. I already want to work on two more. I'm thinking that the edges of the dots might need to be surrounded with a line which I can probably do with the paint pens. I think that would help them stand out. I'm wondering If with one of the other Frost paintings that I want to do, if I will be able to glaze the dots in the rainbow colors that I see on them. I just can't wait to see if these will look like anything.

3 June 2020
The painting is coming out well. I'm happy with it. Now I just must fuss over it until it feels perfect. I'm just taking my time with these. I feel that the first one might need the white paint enhanced. I just want to keep my head down now and develop these new paintings.

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
I started the large Frost painting. I really must concentrate to sustain the quality of the mark and some spots will have to be over painted 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, working 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 I'll apply for another grant.

10 June 2020
I'm working on the Frost painting, and I'm concerned that I'm making the marks too large. But that's what happens when you blow it up. I just need to continue to concentrate. I worked until 6:00 today and it is a long day when painting tiny dots with a brush the size of an eyeliner. I wish I had just the right tool for this, but I don't.

The market has crashed again today because we were having another Covid resurgence. Between people protesting Black Lives Matter and some states opening both early and irresponsibly, the nation is fucked. We will probably have 200,000 deaths by fall.

14 June 2020
I was able to do a little painting today. I haven't been able to go over the entire painting yet. It is strangely not forming patterns. Once I finish, I'll have to find the forms that are so evident in the photograph.

15 June 2020
Lots of work on Frost painting will probably take two more days to get the first go through done and then I'll need to go back to emphasize 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.

24 June 2020
Good day painting. Trying to find the right movement in the large painting. The image had become too regular.

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

30 June 2020
I'm pretty excited about the new paintings, but I want to distinguish them from the Aboriginal work, their work at its best, is quite extraordinary. What I wonder about is the thinking and motivation. Some of it is gripping and moving for us, but totally out of context. There is one where the brush strokes are as compelling as a de Kooning, yet it has nothing to do with de Kooning or abstract expressionism. It makes me wonder if it is ever right for us to love this work, since we are probably attaching to it, meaning that doesn't exist in the original.

2 July 2020
The year has been filled with so much death. Both close as with Hank and Lynn and far with thousands of Covid deaths. We think about it every day as we mask up to leave the house. Then for a bit you 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 talk about people resonating 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 we resonate with.

I remember an experience at one of Larry's Sconzo’s cabarets. There was a jazz performer, and he 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. Gerhy talked about the Renaissance obsession with drapery and folds, and I thought that is just what I want. But I didn't really want to paint fabric. I really want to make abstract paintings that have that feeling. Of course, the thing most like that is El Anatsui ‘s wall pieces. I would love to paint them, but not exactly. I must reconstruct what he does in metal, in paint.

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 again with a view to draping it and again reflecting other colors off of it. Before I hadn't really wanted it to look like fabric, but now it seems like a good idea.

14 August 2020
I've been thinking about the drapery paintings. I'm thinking of ordering some sequins fabric. I seem to want to put some contrary things together, folds, drapery, dimensionality, dissolving, meticulously painted, dissolved into pixels. I'm looking to where I can find those qualities. Can I achieve what I want in paint? Of course, there are several paintings that have gone down this road: “Tarp Two”, “The Tablecloth”, some others, but I want to do this, and let it also look completely abstract. I'll see what I can do.

16 August 2020
I abandoned the painting I was working on. Trying a different version. Unfortunately, I must 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 could 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.

24 August 2020
I hope I can find the best brush tool to make the tiny cheerios-like circles that I will need for the new paintings. I can't wait to start on one, but I'm in the middle of a gigantic painting that is going to take me a couple of weeks to finish.

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 paintings.

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 must be right, and the values -- 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. Trump just creates one shit storm after another. California, Oregon, and Washington are in flames -- the level of the Australian fires last year. 500,000 people have been evacuated and may be homeless in Oregon. I don't know about the other states. We have one disaster after the next and Trump goes on TV and blames the victim.

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.

28 October 2020
People are voting in large numbers -- 50% of all votes have already been cast. The Republicans are doing everything to keep the mail-in vote from being counted. Mitch McConnell is running havoc all over the country. He also looks like he has gone through a meat grinder. His hands are all black and blue, which says to me that he's been on an IV. His lips also looked blue in the recent photo. Perhaps he had COVID. Pence's staff have tested positive for COVID, but he's running around and not in quarantine.

3 November 2020
I didn’t stay up and watch the results. It is looking iffy for Biden. I can't stand that so many Americans are voting for Trump. It makes me despair. They have no idea how much worse things will get under Trump. He has already caused the deaths of 700 people who attended his rallies. He has infected thousands more. We don't know the numbers affected at Black Lives Matter rallies, but at least most of those people were masked. 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 on to some new painting. The election has been exhausting for all of us. Can't wait until this nightmare is over. I wonder if there is some way of predicting Trump's last act. This level of defeat would be crushing to anyone, and he does not have any inner life to retreat to. Some have said he will go full Rambo on us and try to incite his supporters to riot or shoot at and kill Biden supporters.

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. Trump's irrelevance is already profound. He has lost his power base, and it is as though the air has been let out of the balloon.

13 November 2020
Over 160,000 people have died of COVID in the States.

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 the next month. Trump is doing nothing, and he is preventing Biden from transitioning.

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 and Trump supporters are screaming at doctors that they don't have COVID when they do.

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
Half of this country has lost their minds. It is making everyone sick. Not only is COVID overwhelming most of the country, but everyone is anxious, unable to sleep, and unable to eat.

I need to paint!

24 November 2020
COVID cases are surging. There are 400 in Washington County. 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
Working on a small sequins painting, and it is very difficult because of the size of the things I'm trying to paint. I am not sure if I'm having the effect I want. I think that I will need is to paint the whole piece, let it dry, and then paint it again.

The virus situation is becoming drastic. Many hospitals around the country report being on the point of collapse. I'm supposed to see doctors this week and I am reluctant to go. I should call them and see if they really want to see me. 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, although it turns out Trump declined to order more vaccines when Pfizer offered. We can't get rid of that asshole fast enough.

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 and everyone going along with him.

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
I think I'm going through a patch where I'm feeling insecure. It will pass, but it is uncomfortable now. And of course, I haven't really seen anyone in a couple of days.

Things are weird now. People were all over the grocery store and they didn't have the person helping to wipe down the shopping carts. They have laid out the vegetable section completely differently with pre-prepared vegetables. I don't know why. Perhaps they're not getting the variety or quantity that they once did. Between the massive fires in California and COVID, I wonder if there is anyone left to pick the vegetables.

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. There is such tiny detail in it. You must abandon yourself 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.

While I paint, I am listening to “Claude and Camille,” a novel about Monet's relationship with Camille. I always thought he treated her abominably, and I never had the sense that he was particularly in love with her. It seemed that both Bazille and Renoir cared more about her welfare. I'm just not sure if I trust the information the author is working from -- if anyone knows about this probably the woman who wrote my French biography of him knows.

When reading about Monet, so often I skipped the first half of his life. But it interests me more now. Especially as 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. This is where he and Sergeant are so different. Because Sergeant has such an insane facility, even at his most expressive, he is still rendering his subject -- illustrating it. Monet merges with it. It is the edge that he pursues. 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. And I think that “the edge of light,” if you will, is time. His painting, by and large, are about time.

Monet was exploring with paint what Einstein was exploring with math and physics. Monet made his explorations through series. Sometimes he was just repeating motifs, trying to get one better than the last, or perhaps repeating an image that was popular that he might be able to sell. But at other times he used the series to deeply explore a concept. The way the seasons changed, the way the light changed day to day, then hour after hour, and with the Ept River paintings, minute after minute.

With a large late lilies in L’Orangerie, he returned to the seasonal theme in the first room. But in the second room, the space in the painting is so confusing. In that room, you are completely enveloped by the painting. Are you looking at the pond? Or out from the pond. It is almost although the painting should be reversed so that it stood at the center, and we walked around it as we would the pond.

I know that the concept for these paintings may have come from the dioramas that were popular at the time. Those were meant to give you a 360 view of what was around you. Monet isn't really doing that. I should look at the second room again. I know it has the willows in it, which is a specific orientation to the pond at Giverny. But no bridge appears in the painting. So perhaps this is meant to be the view from the bridge. It's funny that I feel so certain that it is based on reality. That I don't think it is a leap into pure abstraction.

He had an idea with these paintings. I must find out what he wrote about it. But I'm not sure how articulate Monet was about his pursuits. Was it Cezanne who said that Monet was just an eye, but what an eye? I don't think that's true. I think he was much more conceptual about his approach to art. He was after irreconcilable things. The passage of time and its effect on the subject. But did that make him obsessed with the sequencing of the work? Did he long to see the works in a series exhibited together?

Each of his pieces is after something specific. He frequently pursued subjects that were borderline incomprehensible. How important was the connection of one image to the next? Beck, an American artist in Giverny, one of the few who Monet liked and talked to, did a series of small paintings based on haystacks. They represented the same scene that changed with the light each hour or half hour. But Beck’s paintings seem like an illustration of the idea, while Monet’s paintings have the same deliberateness, yet with Beck it is as though he knows where the painting is going before it gets there. With Monet, you wonder if the painting is ever going to exist at all. You can see him flow in and out of these motifs where he is more heavily engaged in the construct of the proposition. He sets a problem for himself and then he sets about proving the proposition to himself. Even the way he is going about making the painting starting loosely painted freehand -- and then daub after daub is added until the image begins to take form. He works on a white canvas. He doesn't seem to ever use underpainting. He also doesn't seem to lay in large areas of color.

His genius is in all the details and in the parameters of his pursuits. You need to analyze each series and perhaps by working backwards, determine what he was after. Is he repeating himself with some of his series, or is the intellectual foundation behind the series something new? Initially it would appear that this series came about because he was perceiving differences in the light. He wanted to render that. At least that was the case with the haystacks. But before the haystacks he already had the series of the ice floe.

29 December 2020
Worked on sequins painting all day. I'm finally getting it in a place where it 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. I'm almost there. I must work to get the highlights to lift from the canvas and to have the rest all run together and not separate too much into different patches.

I finished the novel about Monet. She did a pretty good job of weaving together the history with the fiction of the novel. I never thought that Monet felt that strongly about Camille. I thought that their relationship was not the initial driving force, but the fact that she modeled for him. I also didn't think that her parents were as well off as this author implies. I thought she was from a lower social level than Monet. But the author does a good job of showing how Camille mixed well with his friends. I had read elsewhere that it was Bazille and Renoir who pushed Monet to marry her.

The author paints Alice as a stolid woman and Camille as bipolar, but I think it was generally felt that Alice was the volatile one. She did have an explanation for Alice being unable to go back to her family. Allegedly they had not approved of her marriage to Ernest.

It has long been thought that Bazille was gay. It's funny because Derek Fell thought that Caillebotte was gay and that he had an affair with Monet. I have not seen any evidence of that. I think Monet was relatively conventional in that department. You don't hear about him in the brothels or having many affairs. His first mistress was his work in any case. And I think when he was in the midst of one of his searches, when he did paintings where he was exploring a particular aspect of time, he was totally consumed by the effort.

Monet was very disciplined about painting, but it has always surprised me that on two occasions in his life he stopped painting for a period of a year or two. I can't believe that that actually happened. I should look at Wildenstein to see if that is in fact the case. I did enjoy how the author wove in so many of the stories I had heard about him. I'm not sure what we have in terms of documentary evidence. Alice burned Camille's letters. I don't think Monet kept a diary. His evidence is all in his paintings, although what he turned his eye to was not frequently the family.

It's interesting too that when you compare Monet to say, Pisarro, so often with Pizarro's paintings you can see him thinking. “I'm doing this sort of painting, so I will go about it this way.” But I don't end up feeling as though his style is springing from his visual research. With Monet it is never that you get that formulaic feeling. There are times you can tell that Monet has checked out and he is just “phoning in” the painting. But at other times he is thoroughly engaged by what he is seeing, unsure he will be able to paint it.

30 December 2020
Wonderful day painting. Finished the small sequins painting and completely repainted the large metallic one I had started. I went back in 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. Because I have blown it up so large it feels a bit like a Clyfford Still only in that there are shards of color and markings. Not as programmatic as his work. But 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. I'm excited I was painting wet into wet today and I hope I can keep working like that for a while. I think I'll be quite happy if I can bring off these paintings.

On other fronts, 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 levels. But I think the city exodus has brought a lot of COVID here. With the White House ignoring the crisis, it is all spiral spiraling out of control. There have been two more deaths in Washington County and more elsewhere. It's time to go into complete lockdown again.

Had a wonderful conversation with Derek tonight I shared with him my thoughts about Monet in his depiction of time. I thought that with his final painting in the L’Orangerie, what he may have been doing is distilling time to a moment that you then explore by moving around and through it. All paintings conceivably can be said to depict a particular moment. But by making this one that you experience in the round, it becomes a sort of transporter room. It is different from a regular painting because you don't experience the moment you are living in at the same moment because you don't see both at the same time. You can't look past the painting to what is surrounding the painting. The painting is the surround. It does take us to the moment in 1920 or whenever it was painted. I need to see if we have anything that Monet wrote about the work with the second room where that is predominantly blue and you feel that he is taking a lot of liberties with what he is painting. Some people feel that they see a self-portrait in the water. Or like Pollock, he painted something of personal significance underneath and then covered it with the lilies. But the thing of personal significance are the lilies.

31 December 2020
I'm already in the weeds with the new painting. It is going to require overpainting. I'll get there. It just takes time when you're using a brush the size of an eyeliner to paint a 6 by 8-foot painting.

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. I lost weight. It's been a little lonely, but not too bad since I have reconnected with some people. I'm very worried about the coming week and the Republicans objecting to the 2020 Electoral College vote.

3 January 2020
I'm reading the diary of Julie Manet, daughter of Morisot and Edward Manet's brother. She's quite young when she writes this, but it is perfectly charming and evocative of the time.

She writes about painting with her mother and all the people they hung out with, especially Renoir and Degas. Julie speaks with great admiration for her uncle. She was absolutely convinced that Manet was a great artist. She has wonderful opinions about artists and doesn't mince her words. She is a huge fan of Renoir and ends up spending a summer with him and his family after both her father and Morisot have died. It's very touching to see that he took her in and would paint with her. It seems that children were an accepted part of their landscape.

1 January 2021
One 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 Military. If this holds Schumer will be the head of the Senate and McConnell can go fuck himself. Tomorrow is going to be a clown show when over 100 representatives and 10 senators contest 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 the other guy in Georgia, my mind is frozen so I can't recall his name. 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 by these people. 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 -- seditionists, 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 must have been written by an adult in the room, that he concedes. Biden won and now there must be a peaceful transfer of power. But before that, Trump made a statement where he repeatedly said that the election was stolen. He sounded completely off the rails. The fact that he could make both statements makes me doubt his sanity. He sounded perfectly normal and presidential with a concession speech. We're living in the twilight zone. But perhaps he was able to do it because he very frequently says one thing and then the exact opposite, because then he can maintain deniability.

His statement doesn't seem to have saved him. Pelosi is pressuring Pence to exert the 25th amendment. Pence is refusing to take her call. For him it is political suicide to go against Trump more than he already has. He is toast anyway, because Trump is going to continue to bash him, and Trump has the only audience Pence is interested in.

In the meantime, Derrick Garland was appointed attorney general. Very emotional. Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao have resigned from the cabinet. As if the stink of Trump won't stick to them. I'm expecting more defections. There have been several minor ones, including Melania's assistant.

I am hoping that Congress’ effort to hold Trump accountable for the insurrection, is not just a partisan bid. There will be political consequences if they impeach him a second time. It should ruin his chances for a second run. If they can force Pence to invoke the 25th amendment that finishes Pence’s career. His base has already turned on him. I'm sure he is furious that he has stood by Trump all this time, only to be forced out now, or rather only to have his presidential aspirations thwarted.

Unless they make this stick to Trump, he probably still has another act in him. He will develop some media thing, but if they get him for sedition, they might be able to keep him off the air. You don't want to make a martyr out of him. The difficulty is going to be with the white supremacists.

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

7 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.

The insurrectionists they picked up are begging for mercy. It seems that they never thought through their actions

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

10 January 2021
We all 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.

Trump and his family celebrated the insurrection.

I was glad to hear that the insurrectionists were put on a no-fly list, at least the ones they were able to identify.

They will vote on impeachment in the House tomorrow. Mitch McConnell will block it from coming to the Senate.

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. So much of that is due to Trump's incompetence.

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. It was remarkable to hear how the Republicans spun it. Making false equivalence with the Black Live Matters protest. I will admit that I don't know everything that happened in Oregon. And perhaps taking over a Police Department can be seen as a similar breach. But the people forcing their way into the Capitol had plans to blow it up, take hostages and hang the vice president. I do not think the impeachment was frivolous. As for evidence, everyone in that room lived through the evidence. If Trump didn't know that they would be violent, why were there already T shirts made declaring it. In any case, he was impeached and ten Republicans, I think, joined the Democrats.

18 January 2021
I'm still working on the large sequins painting. It just isn't doing what I want. Perhaps I need to bag it and try something else. I think I picked something both too dark and too subtle.

Biden and his team have already come up with a fantastic way to deal with the fact that no one can attend the inaugural because of COVID. They have filled the mall with American flags, each representing one of the 300,000 people who have died of COVID. A poignant display of Trump's legacy. But Biden has also finally acknowledged this terrible loss.

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 that what the problem is. I want the painting to have an insane amount of tiny detail, and when I project the image on the canvas, it gets too enlarged. 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. Trump and his great move as manager of COVID didn't order any. The pipeline is empty, and he probably did that to show up Biden because despite everything, he knew he was going to lose. So now because of that asshole, thousands of more people will die. 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 still 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 the colorful frost painting that I stopped working on months ago.

28 January 2021
I've been having so much trouble working. I finally called Irene and asked her if she had any insight. She said first of all, it's COVID and also, I usually go away this time of year and recharge. I can't go away, and we have been isolated for so long that we can barely remember what day it is and our thinking is all muddled. I asked her if I should stop and clean the studio and she said yes.

I took down the colorful 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. It is in a way, a part of the Dreamscape series. 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. I've pulled a few other things that I feel similarly about, but let's see if I can get this one done.

29 January 2021
Good day painting -- started on my TV winter landscape. I know that I will have to paint the whole thing once and then paint it again. I mean, I'm hoping I will be able to get the kind of twilight dream space, the kind of otherworldly quality that you get in a winter day.

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

3 February 2021
Good day painting, no idea if the painting will be worth the effort.

4 February 2021
I'm trying to hammer through the things I need to get done and still keep a chunk of time to paint. I'm very insecure about the way I'm painting this painting. It is very much like the way I did the first large birch tree 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 January 2021
Another good day painting. I'm pretty sure I'll have to completely redo the first half of the painting. 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's just that it looks 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 this 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, and not in an in a Monet way. More internal than external.

10 February 2021
Good day painting. Although 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? They say Trump will go on a revenge tour, but I can't imagine he would really do that on his own dime.

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

22 February 2021
One of the things I've said in the past that I think is consistently true is that I like the light to seem as though it emanates from inside the painting toward the viewer. In that sense, they have a bit of the feeling of a Birchfield painting which seems to emanate light and energy. 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 the visual components, the stuff that things are made of as 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 some one’s reaction to music. How you resonate with the music 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 that both when I paint and when I look at painting.

23 February 2021
I think people don't really understand the selfish nature of being an artist, which mostly has to do with time. You really need a huge amount of time to get your work done. I don't work at night, so I often feel that I don't get enough time in. There is a greed to it. A desire to see what is coming next and not wanting to miss anything and wanting to do your best work.

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 vaccine today. Very well-run set-up at SUNY Albany. I felt real joy at getting it.

6 March 2021
I had an interesting epiphany this morning. When I was an undergraduate at Bennington and had a studio in one of the new dorms, I made several pieces that transformed the space of the room. With one I covered a wall and the radiator below it with black plastic. Then I spray painted part of it with silver paint. I taped off some of the black. When I removed the tape, you were left with some sort of shape. What happened though was that the wall was transformed. You could not really tell where the surface was. The surface appeared permeable.

In the corner of the room, I connected the two walls with a paper mache wall that had bowl-like openings in it. The construction obscured the corner and changed the space.

There was a final piece where I took pages from the New York Times and pinned them to the wall from one corner of the paper. I covered the wall as though it were tiled like a roof in these loose papers that overlapped one another. The effect was that the wall disappeared, and a soft permeable surface took its place.

As simple as these pieces were, they really worked. The faculty were excited by them. What is interesting to me about them now is that these are exactly the problems or propositions I'm making with my paintings. Something that transforms your sense of the surface. That changes space through suggestion, but that also gives you the sense that it is something you can pass through. Certain things are in you from the beginning. It just takes years to recognize which of the things coming out of you is yours and which are sent by someone else’s muse.

12 March 2021
Worked on my TV Winter landscape painting. Fingers crossed that I am 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 winter dreamscape. It is 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 noncolor. 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 think I'll do a series of these, but I'm not sure who will be interested. 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 have one more that I think I will work with this. 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 another fast painting today. It's of trees around a lake in winter from a TV set. 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.

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.