First of a new series of paintings

There's nothing quite like the smell of turpenoid and oils after a long break from painting. This is my first painting since I finished my Black Series, and I think you'll see the connection.

I'm using a range of different media here, and this photo doesn't do it justice. I love to let my media interact and create textures I would never be able to replicate by hand. One of the richest textures in this painting comes from the a paint medium I use called galkyd, which helps me get that thick gloss surace, and some shellac I picked up at a hardware store.

I believe the galkyd is oil-based while the shellac seems (and I could absolutely be wrong about this) water-based, and I'm getting this really interesting shattering of the shellac surface when it's sitting on top of the galkyd.

As always, it's all about the process for me.

Here's one from my Black Series for comparison - in these, the shiny surface is entirely made from shellac and oils.

Here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws

Here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws
- Songs: Ohia

the moon is the color of a coffee stain

"The moon is the color of a coffee stain"
- Tom Waits, Bottom of the World

A person is the universe aware of itself

He's looking up at the stars

I’m a long way from home, and he’s just lying there, he’s just lying in that bed and he’s looking up at the stars. The blankets white on his round body must shroud his limbs, and his great round body, and his limbs just lie there.

He’s looking up at the stars, and he sees a bird out the window, and it’s the only thing that he really knows at the moment, and he knows that a moment is a precious thing. It should be a precious thing, but he can’t feel that way right now, even though he wants to. He needs this to mean something, and he can’t just go out without any meaning.

And she could be lying there, sitting there with her head propped up against the arm of his bed. She tried to hold a pillow, but it fell, and she must have dozed off for another few minutes, and her head just leaned up against the railing of the bed, and the white blankets fall from him, and they cover her right leg as they fall from him and down past the chair.

The bird is gone for him now, and his eyes look at the ceiling for a moment, and he wonders when they’ll come.

Why am I here,

And his eyes look around confused, and the room is dark and it’s night time out and there’s nobody around to answer him. What a precious thing lost, and I think how precious it might seem to me, and I think that this must have happened before, and it must have happened many times before, but it is fresh yet, beautiful by itself.

And she puts a hand unconsciously on his arm, and he looks down at his arm where another person has touched with him, and touch seems so far away now, and his brow furls, and he will miss this. He will miss her. But she’s asleep, and I’m glad she is because it’s too sad, and it’s too pristine a thing. I wonder if he’s glad that she was a sleep. If he knew. And his brow furled, and he can feel her hair, and he just had touched her hair a moment before, but he couldn’t touch it now. He wouldn’t touch it again, and it was quite real, then.