Home Alone; Another Self-Portrait

There is no other human or dog in the house but me. I don't even have a cat here to eat or at least kill the hoards of mice marching around here both day and night. I take issue with them, for I keep a clean house, and they are little freeloaders, in from the cold, eating my fiberglass insulation, electric wiring, and lord knows what else. I try not to think of it.

I asked Ruth if I could borrow Tank, her fat lady cat from across the street. Well I wasn't really serious, and she needs Tank over there for the same reason. They don't have mice; they do have Tank. I have so many 'feeding stations' out I should be attracting mice from miles away, but they don't seem to be bothered by their very special mouse 'food'.

They will keep coming. I will keep painting.

Cat Waiting: A Self-Portrait

What have I been doing for the last five month? Painting. Eating a lot of cheesecake in the hopes of getting fat. Being lonely for the sounds of my dogs shuffling around the house and barking at the mice. For that is surely what they have been doing, and I at last have finally figured out what the problem was. Is. Well they are still barking. And I still am listening to them scurry around at night.

One night I couldn't sleep at all. I would drift off only to awaken to a mouse nightmare in a few moments. How can I fear something which I tower over? And spiders? What is it about them that is so yucky? They carried the plague that is what. I don't exactly know what that old plague was but I do know a lot of people died of it... maybe with the explosion of people on this planet, old Mother Earth will send us another plague to sort of thin us out. Like a garden, things won't grow when they are planted too close together.

Conflict: I loved painting on the palette with the stylus more than I could describe. Then one day, with no access to Pickles (the name of my laptop; I wouldn't tell you the name of my son-in-laws' for anything!, again, with no access to Pickles, I picked up some regular things and began to continue with the self-portraits by 'hand' in story board format. With thanks to John for informing me I am not the only person who works in this format. Arghhh... the thing is, I never ever saw a drawing book with marvelous tiny little boxes, marching across this lovely heavy paper; either 4 to a sheet or 2 to a sheet. All in a 3 1/2" X 5" moleskine notebook.

Trouble is, I like the look of the handpainted pieces more. Perhaps much more. And they will cost so very much because they take a very long time to make, and I would not be planning on making prints of these. Matter of fact, the only destination right now is for me to work through my lifes' issues. The usual artistic angst.

So what you are seeing tonight is in the story board format, in other words, in a box. The point is, it is made to look like part of a story, and hopefully, you can fill in the rest of the story however you like. Lots of luck!