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I like working from photographs, especially when they're my own. It becomes a simple extension of my darkroom process of past years. The energy of my images is still there for me.

I finished Oscar Peñaranda's thought provoking book a couple of weeks ago now. Many stories I would highlight as fundamental for understanding "something" about the Philippines since the curriculum in the USA has been rather pathetic. Though I am no writer or academic Oscar's "Follower of the Seasons" is inspiration to at least, for especially people like me, to put things into words.

I just watched a couple older John Oliver videos on racism in America. I have often been Impatient and  hopeless especially now with the slaughter in Gaza, exacerbated by the surrounding ignorance. 

Yet there is always hope, the bare threads of intelligent proggressive thinkers young and old. Knowing the planet will continue just fine if we choose extinction over evolution.

I used to think being an artist/photographer was a big deal. Rather nothing in life is that big a deal, it just plays out. Basic drawing precedes painting. Solid fundamentals makes a photographer. It's  always simply work. With each correction in the drawing bit after bit of enlightenment is compiled only to begin again upon completion. Once again the not knowing.

Someone noticed this was a Laguna Province tricycle.

adjustment

      I reworked the seated person on the anti-gravity chair. My original rendering of it may have been better, but the shading of it more accurate. It matters to only me, to follow the logic of it.  

I recently reunited with this painting from 2013. 34.75 in x 34.75 in acrylic on canvas.

Looking back I  wonder if I was better, or am I just as good as I am now. I  can only say, I don't know, never new, and still haven't a clue. All I  know is I like this old painting. Perhaps too I am just getting old, past my prime, but perhaps  on path to a new prime. But certainly must keep going and not think about it.

The more abstract has greater mental freedom, less restrictive than having ideas.

Nothing and everything matters, especially what others think.

Mark Twain was frustrated by others as well. Where thought itself was offensive. The nothingness is the zen. Perhaps Art frees us to babble, allow ourselves to see the absurdity and  the same time the essence of it. That perception as well as light is bent by gravity.