So to cut to the chase, I didn’t come back from sabbatical with a major change in the direction of my practice. The cube persists. It feels gratifying on one hand to know that I can still find value in mining it and the fact that I am open to change I hope is a good sign that it is a vehicle for developing themes and not an end in itself.
There are some wins that I’ve had this year that this break has given me the time to reflect on, including shaping some goals for future growth of my practice. At the risk of sounding, like I am flip, or even worse, just a hobbyist, my practice hasn’t included a lot of goal setting, and by that I mean intentionality around what I want it to look like at some future time. I have had specific targets, like getting back into teaching, or curating, and the next stage I think involves stacking and staging several, including some that get broken into pieces. And fundamentally, the amount of progress I’ve made in the quality of painting has motivated me to push even harder. I made some pretty good paintings which makes me want to try for great paintings.
I also learned about myself- that I can be alone and be OK with that, that there are strategies for organizing work flow that would unlock the level of productivity necessary to satisfy commercial demand, and that I really struggle to read nonfiction (a good idea can easily catch my attention and turn my thoughts away from the text that follows).
That’s it. Which is also a win- it would have been pretty deflating to find I was so unhappy with my life once I got a break from it that I needed everything to change..
Painting After Art is Dead 
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