I cleaned up my study on Friday, really shoveled the place out.  I mostly got my desk cleaned off, but I barely touched my drafting table.  For those who have never seen my sanctum, I have a massive oak library table, 4×8, with a fake leather top, for my desk, and behind me, my old drafting table serves as my painting table.

Viz.:

So this morning, while waiting for all the Baptists to clear the street so I could go mulch the labyrinth without disturbing their consciences—because I’m considerate like that—I thought I might at least reorganize the drafting table.

But the first thing that happened was that I picked up a painting that I have not touched in at least 18 months.  Here it is:

Wow.  I like this.  I like this a lot.  It is of course one of my old Field series, one of the first, in fact.  It’s a photograph from the New York Times, of skaters in Central Park in the late 19th century with the fabulous Dakota apartment house rising in splendid isolation to the west.  My modus operandi was to paint directly over the photo and turn it into an abstraction.

It actually works, I think.  Don’t do it, Dale.  Do not clear off that drafting table.  Do not get out your gouaches and brushes and start all that up again at this point.  Don’t do it.  It has a kind of sinister energy that appeals to me. don’t do it It makes me feel as if I might have been accomplishing something all that time do not do it.

Ah well, time to mulch the labyrinth.