RESTLESS

I simply cannot stay still.  There is nothing in me that is willing to remain in one place for any stretch of time, my feet and legs, my mind, my attention span, everything wants to get up and go.  Go where?  It doesn’t matter, anywhere but here.

If I’m sitting if front of the TV, my fingers are constantly strumming on the arm of the chair; at out kitchen counter my feet and legs are bouncing on the footrest, each of these activities create just enough noise to drive my dear wife crazy.  I’m at my very best when on the cell phone.  In the kitchen I walk around the center island, continuously, without stopping for the entire call.  In the studio I will walk the length of the studio-gallery, back and forth, sometimes actually interfering with the call’s signal.  I don’t know why I do this; it is entirely unconscious.  I’m inclined to believe it is related to some pre-natal event in my mother’s life.

I like to read.  There are piles of books of all kinds all around my study, studio, and beside table.  There has to be, because I rarely read more than 5 or 6 pages at any one time.  If I’m reading a mystery/thriller as soon as something critical or dangerous is about to happen I close the book and pick up another one.  Later I will return to the first book and continue reading, only to repeat the cycle again and again.

                       

It’s the same with my art.  I almost never complete a painting from start to finish in one sitting.  Small 5x7 watercolors or drawings are the exception.  I will work on a painting one small stage at a time, taking frequent, totally unnecessary breaks, usually to spend another brief period of time on a book or two that I’m reading.  This is why I like to have more than one piece of work in progress at the same time, frequently in different mediums.  Then when I move from one to another I can feel productive and ambitious and not neurotic and spastic.

              

 Of course this makes for a rather schizophrenic studio, with work stations  constantly evolving and moving; to counter this I’ve turned to the rolling cart.  I now have four of them, each holding a different medium, and easily moved about to accommodate my own moving about.

I would love to finish this post but I gotta go…really.