The tortoise (production) and the hare (ideas)

All the photos below are currently works in progress. I typically wouldn't show these photos but wanted to see if it might push me to finish them. 

I like anything that makes me think of Boo Radley and the gifts he would leave in the tree for Scout and Jem

which means I like the idea of the Little Free Library

which makes me want a house even more so that I could do something similar.

I don't know if she still does this, but Cynthia Markert used to laminate prints of her paintings and leave them around Knoxville. I know because I have one on my refrigerator. I found it stapled to a piece of plywood on an abandoned building downtown a few years ago. I wasn't quite sure if I was supposed to take it, but the way it was presented made me conclude it was meant for its finder.

I know I don't have to own a home to imitate this secret giving and receiving. It's something I'm going to think more about

but not right now because I am up to my ears in unfinished work.

I had a studio visit with Kelly Hider (fellow artist and studio-mate) last week who told me that it might do me some good to finish up what I'm working on and then focus in on one specific project.

I've been thinking a lot about this, how I could take one thing that I'm thinking about and push it as far as it will go. I'm not sure if I'm that type of artist. I'm pretty scattered, except for the mason jar paintings, which is the most consistent series I've ever stuck with, but that's not really what I'm talking about anyway. There's nothing I'm trying to solve as I make the mason jars.

Kelly and I are extremes; she's been working on the same project for at least six months and will continue to work on it over the next year.

I can't imagine that I have that kind of focus in me.

Also, I've always had a weird feeling about Series. If I plan to make 6 similar paintings, by the time I'd get to Number 6, it would be so far removed from Number 1 that it wouldn't look like a series anymore. Is the point not to meander or is ok for thoughts and ideas to evolve? How could they not?

Right now, it doesn't matter. I'm making a bunch of work (partly due to to my FB hiatus) and feel like it's all funneling toward a focus that may come in the next year or so. It's enjoyable at the very least, and isn't that what it's all about?