paintings – Almost Every Thursday

Did I think that one big painting would be easier than 30 smaller ones?

More satisfying? More informative? More challenging? More efficient?

One thing that’s great about the one, big November painting is that for the people who thrive on ignoring me and all my grim paying-attention-to-the-coronavirus-data-crapola, they can just not look at the one big painting about it this month. Concisely and conveniently kept in one location.

I was exposed to coronavirus this past weekend at a dog show where I was competing. I have no symptoms, and I’ll start testing as soon as I can unravel the semi-official unretracted non-advice now vaguely suggested by the CDC.

Someday, after I find out why no one in charge suggested fresh air and masks to prevent the spread of this plague in the first place, I’d like to know why the total U.S. covid deaths reported by the New York Times went from 1,072,285 on November 18, 2022 to 1,085,139 on November 19, 2022 with no explanation, as if a difference of 12,854 dead people in the U.S. is not worth mentioning. Couldn’t we get a footnote?

The finished painting is 4′ by 5′.

About 434 days ago, I started writing down what day it was, because I was having trouble telling what day it was.

We’ve had only a few days of genuinely cold weather this winter, and one snowy day. Otherwise, it was mud, mud, mud outside at the end of 2021, that very long, very strange year.

Some nights I dream about making paintings. Once, I dreamed I was in a great gray void with a long, long brush that was two or three times as tall as me, and a clanking tin bucket of black ink hanging on my belt, and I danced across a great, undulating sheet of soft, thick paper as it floated on a shallow sea. The paper wanted to curl into a scroll before I could finish writing the numbers, trapping my feet between the two tubes.

Thanks to the arrival of the omicron variant in the U.S., on top of the reluctance of about 40% of America to bother getting vaccinated, we ended 2021 in the U.S. with an explosion in the number of infections. There may not be enough test kits available to measure the cases.