M picked me up for lunch and we went to the Arkansas Arts Center Carroll Cloar Exhibition. When we first walked into the gallery, it smelled really bad, and I couldn’t place what the smell was. It wasn’t until we got to the Carroll Cloar studio installation that I realized the smell was old paper. If you have ever made your own paper and your paper pulp got moldy, you know that smell can be painful. M took a picture of me in front of Cloar’s studio, and I thought I was smiling, but apparently I was just looking at the camera.

There were so many beautiful patterns and colors. The compositions were also very pleasing to look at.

I got inspired and decided to forego house chores and to-do maintenance list (mostly involving my stinky dog Ein) and worked in my studio.

I put in an old black & white movie – The Sky’s the Limit (1943), a romantic musical comedy film starring Fred Astaire and Joan Leslie – and got to work. At one point, I found myself wishing that Fred Astaire’s name was spelled with an E, like Esterre. I don’t know why.

I finished my chicken painting studies.

I want to do a large landscape painting with chickens in the foreground, so I gessoed over an old painting. It was a failed painting that I never finished.

I always feel super great when I work in my studio. It’s the same feeling when I’m playing music. I feel alive and immersed in the present. I feel awake.