Yes, that's the one, but in a horrible reproduction nothing like the painting. And my calling it cerulean isn't right either, it's a blue with a purple tone he used a lot.

Are you a gypsy Ellenpoly? I'm a nomad in my own house. After getting my kids into their own rooms I'm left without a space. But I'm trying to fullfil my wife's dream of having me live in a shed or doghouse in the backyard.

If you look at Picasso a lot, one funny thing is that he used a green fabric with red stripes, and the red stripes don't quite follow the folds in the fabric but float over it, several times across his life-span, from very early to very late. Also, African rythms make a good comparison to his style, I think. Even in his many very classically styled later drawings, he shifts things just slightly to make the lines engagingly inter-related across the page. When my brother first listened to African drumming he declared it a mess, he could tell that it was sensless banging--and he had a pretty good ear. Even stoned out of his head he could always follow the lines of the various instruments in complex music. But he was wrong. if you start to learn how to do African drumming, you see it does make sense, and is highly ordered.

Almost everyone has enough verbal technique to write a deathless short-story, but then it takes vision, sensibilty, and dedication to the artsy which overcomes the vain and fartsy impulses. The over-emphasis on technique in visual art is because it isn't taught as much as it should be, and used to be, as a basic skill, and some people think there's more to it than there really is. It's not magic.

My mother-in-law entrusted me to burn the things she couldn't throw out upon her death. I understood it. But in the end she changed her mind, and thought her kids might want things.

Working for patrons can be a good thing in itself. Some kinds of creativity thrive on being set with a problem, and many things die of having no limits set. A pre-determined purpose gives you something to work around, and an audience, and gets you a little outside yourself. I like to paint kids.

   Critiques are interesting. It's really hard to be any use to anybody about their work. People trying to sound smart, many just being bitchy and mean. As hard as I've tried to be open, and clear, I've only had a few really successful moments, which I remember and clutch, and re-tell with more pride than I have in any of my own work. It's hard because you have to see what someone's is trying to do that they haven't quite done, and see what they can do about it. Sometimes even when you're wrong, taking enough trouble over it gives the person some new energy to work on something they're stuck on. I wrote nine pages of notes on a draft of my father's first play, and though he didn't use a single one of my suggestions (and though they were GOOD suggestions) he got interested in working on it again, so there's that. It's something.

I'm thinking of finding a local writer's group to give me a resonant backboard to bounce off, help me finish some old things. I think it might help, though it's never really all that nice.