3:12 PM: i realized after a few hours of work that i haven't fully recovered from yesterdays long day, driving a total of 7 hours in challenging conditions, having my eye poked & prodded with crazy bright lights searching the depths of my retina, and so on. so i'm stopping here for the day & will resume tomorrow morning.
after the scrumble, i created the blue and grey dots you see, waited for them to dry and drew into it with a graphite stick. my friend dan's maps are playing an important role, as they have in previous gaze paintings. remote lakes in maine, the names such as upper sabao lake, bring up memories, albeit dan's memories, of glorious hikes into the pristine wilderness that was. oh, the frogs; oh the bitter birds with twitting beaks and fanning wings; oh, the red coated foxes deep in heat, eyeing the frogs and the birds with distant hunger. all this, all this enters the pictorial space with scrapes and flourishes, drips and lines drawn with a certainty bred of pencil studies of noses and eyes i made in 5th and 6th grade.
1:58 PM: back in the studio after yesterday's jam packed day, which started at 4am. we drove through a snowstorm to get to my eye appointment at the lions eye center at anschutz in denver.
the retinal specialist recommended going back to one of the drops i was using after my glaucoma/cataract surgery a few months ago. plus another kind of drops, both designed to very slightly raise the pressure in my right eye, to facilitate the reduction of a bubble of fluid behind my retina. it's complicated, but my surgeon should be able to determine at my next appointment whether it's working.
i'm back at work on gaze 35. did a lot of collaging this morning & am about to do a scrumble, then work into it with acrylics. i'll post more pics at the end of my painting day.