I am in the middle of working on a new CINEFIELD® and so other big works are on hold until done. There is still the nightly drawing/woodshedding. After a week or so, I find myself missing painting. I am lucky that my lyra pieces are a close approximation, it gives me the same serving the process emotional pay off.

Although the lyra pieces are also a form of woodshedding, I consider all the mediums I use of equal value, nothing is a second class citizen.. If I can get the effects i want in monochrome, especially for portraits, then when I am using my paints, it becomes “easier”.

Stateside, the news continues to be bleak. Everything has morphed into culture wars, a forced upon life or death struggles. A lot of it manages to be very serious and also absurd. It’s become too easy for one to remain amped up from a steady diet of doom scrolling, shaking their fist at the other side while veins July Fourth pop in the forehead. Even as the book banners morph more and more into (most likely) book burners, know it has to eventually pass.

In the interim, all artists have a duty to do their thing. Not to have specific political messages in their work, but to show beauty, even terrible beauty or ugly beauty. It serves as a reminder there is something bigger than oneself out there, culture. It’s a way to show that emotions besides the negative ones can be equally as strong.

If everything but the fight and thoughts of the enemy drop away, what’s the point of it all?

Two Lyra pieces 5×7