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Finished a big piece today, got it photographed, sent it off. Felt good for about four hours. Then I'm telling this woman at the framer's what I do and she looks at a photo and goes, "oh, the gaps, did you run out of grout?" No. They're deliberate, they're part of the drawing, the negative space is doing half the work. But I just said "no, it's a choice" and smiled and paid for my frame. It's the ones who think they're being kind that get me. Nobody walks up to a painter and asks if the brushstrokes were a mistake. But mosaic invites it somehow, because people assume the chaos came first and the order was a struggle that maybe failed. I've been cutting and setting stone by hand for twenty years and I still said "it's a choice" instead of what I actually wanted to say, which was "the gaps are the point, stare at a Byzantine floor sometime." I know I should let it slide. I'm still annoyed at myself for the soft answer more than at her. No question, just needed that said out loud where someone might get it. 🙂

finally cold-emailed that artist whose work i've been following for years. the one whose collages made me want to start tearing up my own paper. nothing fancy, just said her piece about abandoned buildings in detroit changed how i see negative space and thanked her. she replied in like four hours. wrote back a real paragraph. i've been walking around the apartment holding my phone like an idiot. small thing but it's not small. sending the email was harder than any brushstroke i've made this month.

Okay so I've painted the same window in my apartment maybe eleven times now, the one over the fire escape with the bad caulk line and the traffic light bleeding red onto the sill at night, and I've been fighting the mullions for months. Masking fluid, frisket, tape, all of it, and it always came out with these horrible hard edges that made the whole thing look like a sticker. Dead. Technically clean and completely dead, which is worse than sloppy, honestly. Painted it Sunday without any of that. Just negative space and a lot of praying. Hellebore white and a wash of quinacridone rose for the light coming through, lifting with a damp sable where I needed the bar of the frame back. Lost two of the panes entirely, one of the verticals is crooked by like a millimeter and a half, and the whole thing breathes in a way none of the other ten do. I don't know if I'm relieved or furious that the tool I trusted was the problem. My old figure drawing teacher used to say the medium you reach for to make it safe is the one that makes it boring and I thought that was a load of shit at the time. Anyway I'm never buying frisket again and I want to hear from people who do crisp architectural edges how you keep them alive because I clearly have no idea