Since I typically work Saturdays, I have Mondays off and so Tuesdays are my first days back at my desk, my work-day reality, and the normal-ness of routine. I like my work and I tend to miss the place a little when I'm not there but the back-to-it-ness of a busy week is so busy, so full of details, so disorganized, and so phone-ringing and problems-to-solve that I needed cookies when I came home. So a couple of chocolate chip cookies later, I'll sort it out in a somewhat helpful way (I hope).

The more I read about other artists making at times they shouldn't be able to make (when in exile, after learning their father had killed himself, when they couldn't eat), I realize that I have no good reason not to let myself make the artwork I need or want to make.

I'm supposed to give a talk on Thursday about balancing work and painting and so I'm thinking I should work on balancing. The women I'll talk to have kids. I don't. I went upstairs and visited my attic studio tonight. I was surprised by the stuff on the floor (paintings in a first stage of mess and muck), by the big brushes I could have used yesterday, by the magnetic pull of potential energy.

Ten hours of work and 30 minutes of painting isn't much of a direct balance but I will sleep better an dtheoretically when I wake up tomorrow I will head upstairs and pour more drawings, marks, and meanings out of my head.I'm still chewing on Kozol's ideas, scary that there is a rubric for walking in lines. Especially since all the kids I know and live zig instead of zag when they're in lines. It's the teachers I work with who tell me that they love their noisy kids on a saturday morning because they know those kids are learning as they draw, thinking as they talk/tell a story, getting excited as they get creative...
So, maybe there is some balance here...
sleepy me, headed upstairs to fight the good fight in paint and pencil...
Rachael