The canvas that I am currently working on is much toothier than I am use to. The texture of the surface is coarse; it is like painting on sandpaper. Which I like. Which I wanted.
The paintings are of the shoppers in big superstores like Wal-Mart and Target. I want there to be an earthy texture to the painting. Like a canvas bag from a health food store or a burlap sac.

I like it aesthetically, the texture, the colour and the weight of the cloth when I stretch it. But also I want to emphasize the fact that I am making paintings; real canvas with bumps and texture and a presents.
I have this great place that does my giclee prints http://mesaartgallery.net/digital_print.html. The prints are so realistic and smooth surfaced. I envy them. Like a serf in the Middle Ages marvelling at a photograph, I find there is a magic that a print on canvas plays on me. I yearn for my paintings to achieve the same smooth, faultless surface.
But I am not a machine. And that is a probably a good thing. The Rothko that I saw at the MOCA exhibit breathed in the room http://www.moca.org/museum/pc_artwork_detail.php?acsnum=85.24&keywords=rothko&x=14&y=3& and the De Feo had dirty edges and frayed lines http://www.moca.org/pc/viewArtWork.php?id=75. It a things imperfections that makes the thing original, proves it to be handmade.
Anyway, I want all this texture but I have to learn how to paint on it. It is greedy. It takes all the paint off my brush before I can spread it to the rest of the hungry canvas. It has made the current image lean, anorexic, anaemic for colour.
If I could use oils I would be fine, oils are slick, abundant and generous to the canvas. You can share out oil paint like biblical fishes. It slithers on a canvas like a whore on silk. But alas, I cannot.
The smell of the turpentine and even odourless mineral sprit (a misnomer) sends my pregnant body retching. So I am just going to have to re-teach myself the joys of acrylics until I pop the little guy out (BTW, I have the big scan on Tuesday and find out the sex)

So as not to bugger up what I have done, I am going today to work on a simple landscape. Same MO. A light sketch beneath, and then work the blues of the sky and ocean. I have a few smaller prepared canvases for this very purpose.

Anyway, better get going,

Oh, I went to a great lecture at art centre (they are very good about me gate crashing their MAs lectures) by the land artist Leta Albuquerque, perhaps I will write about that tomorrow http://www.litaalbuquerque.com/