Better

Our therapist did, in fact, sort things out. Evidently I was intended to lose my shit over that homework assignment so that she could stick her hands into my pain/anger, pull it up by the root cause, and be like, “See? That’s how you do it.” 

Then she said, “Okay, so I’m going to have you move on to the next chapter, and then we’re going to come back and do this chapter again.” 

Mike:

So that's going okay. 

Meanwhile, my painting/research proposal* got a soft nod from one of the Caledonia Society grant committee members (won't find out for sure until May), so I'm busy gathering info and trying out different painting surfaces. Most 18th/19th century artists painted on linen, so I ordered a couple small linen panels mounted on aluminum, which is the modern version of the traditional canvas; light enough to travel with and sturdy enough not to get smashed in a suitcase. I'll figure out which one I like best and then get bigger ones for the project. Spent about 2 hours researching field easels, looking for something portable and lightweight, and narrowed it down to a folding French easel I liked before realizing it's the same one I already have. I am smart.

Anyway, when I wasn't doing that I was painting miniatures and Squid Game on my lunch break. 

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. 

― Kurt Vonnegut

*The proposal is to study historic Scottish art, travel to sites depicted in selected landscape paintings, document how the scenery has changed over time, and paint the modern view in the same style as the original - then come home and use the same techniques/color palette to paint a similar landscape here (eg, coastal rocks, cloudy mountain, etc), thus linking Scottish tradition with Scottish descendants in Hawaii. This is the year I win my fight with landscape painting, damn it.