I'm not painting the obsessive way I used to, and probably will never do so again. It's not about hating my work or hating myself or fear of expression or not enough time. The desire is just not there anymore. I do other things now, such as rip paper and paste it to something else and it is NOT collage, I don't know why I so dislike it being called collage, especially when no one has seen it, but I do. A person can't help these things, sometimes.

I just realized (I'm always just realizing something) that as I once stayed up way too late painting, and I painted when I should have been doing something else that really needed my attention, and I painted even though I was exhausted because I wanted to paint far more than I wanted to sleep, I now do the same thing with writing. Writing pours out of me the way paintings once did. On this, my second day of writing a blog, I hated to stop but I absolutely had to. Then I went straight to read new emails, bypassing what I absolutely had to do, and came to an email that caused me to copy my response to it and turn it into a second blog for day 2.

This is about art supplies: Most of the time it's not necessary to buy everything that's on the supplies list provided by your instructor (but u already know this). When at The Art Store I hear someone asking a salesperson if this or that is in stock, and they're holding a sheet of paper with a lot of things listed on it, I know they're first-year students from CCA across the sreet and scared spitless they'll buy something wrong. I listen to them read from their list and I think to myself, "Dont need that, don't need that, I never used that, not necessary," and what I think is: Look on CRAIGSLIST!

How many The Painting Experience students have dumped their no-longer available paints when, after a period of time passed, they figured they'd never use them again? How many TPE students would give their frickin' eye teeth to get those paints back because that kind of high-quality paint is no longer available?

Of course, if they'd stopped painting, they stopped painting and having the paints back wouldn't change a thing.

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