Getting there

 Morning in Korea (work in progress)

Acrylic on canvas

24 x 24 inches

Barbara Muir © 2011

This new year is almost 1/12th gone.  Yikes.  It
is speeding by.  When we went to see the motivational
speaker (he would deny he was that) Mike Dooley
last summer he said that one of the secrets to
a happy life was to be busy.  Well January
certainly has met that criteria.  Whew!
I feel like I'm running full tilt all the time.

The blog helps keep me grounded, and seeing
your work helps me figure out my next steps.
The other day I talked to a wonderfully
talented friend in California who I met at a
painting course eight years ago.  She is classically
trained with a fine art degree, and I love her
intelligent approach to painting.  Plus as she
lives, works, and continues to study in
L.A., she meets top artists, art critics and
collectors.

She helped me see that an extra dimension to
my Skype portraits was the layer of abstraction
-- which if you use video telephoning can be created
by the distortion of storms and distance -- this series
is based on talks from Korea and Taiwan -- a 14 hour time
difference for one thing.  So the dilemma is
how much abstraction, how much distortion?
She is right.

Tonight I worked primarily on the painting 
I'm showing you, pushing and pulling the
abstraction while I listened to David Seidler, the
screenwriter for the movie The King's Speech in an
interview with Jian Ghomeshi on Q on CBC Radio.
The interview was great, the painting is getting there.
I only have one more day and part of Friday to push
all three paintings to the place I want them to be,
so there's not much time left.  But I feel close.  So
close.  I'm sure you know the feeling. I'm afraid I
can't give you new daily paintings when I'm up to
my ears in a series like this.  But please know that
I am painting every day.  And how.

Have a loving-working-on-what-you-do day.