Update

I forgot that I said I'd update this blog when I finished the first section. Which is bad. Had the poor people at the airport stumbled upon that last entry they would have developed instant high blood pressure thinking about how far behind schedule I was. But no. I'm ahead. The first section is done and I expect the second section to be finished tomorrow or Wednesday. I even took a day off last week to see all kinds of amazing art in Chelsea and at Moma. I'll write more about that and post images of the first two sections one day soon.

The Curse of the Monkey's Fur

I've been working on the first section of the 48 foot painting for WAY too long, and it's been making me crazy. Yesterday while I was painting I remembered this blog's title and started muttering bitterly . Monkey fur, as it turns out, was a prophetic blog title that forecasted my artistic doom. I have spent most of my waking hours in the last two weeks trying to paint monkeys, which I can draw perfectly well, but which turn out to be be really tricky to paint. About two weeks ago, after I'd put a whole cartload of them into the design of the piece, I discovered that they are hideously difficult, because, no joke, of the fur. First my monkeys looked like bears. Then they looked like yeti-monkeys with serious static cling. I finally got them under control early this week, but I'd put about eight of them into this piece and each one was taking me two days to do, which was putting me behind schedule. I finally I got the hang of them today, and after about ten hours in the studio the piece is pretty much done- it needs a few tiny touch ups, but the monkeys are smooth and well coiffed and easily identifiable to other primates. They look pretty good. I managed to make the first successful one-day monkey this afternoon, but I am not going to be putting many of them into the next section. Luckily for me, the monkeys are bit players in this narrative: it's all about the squirrels, which, thank God, are behaving themselves. I'll post again when I finish the next section, which I hope will be very soon.