Everything I touched today turned to crap. Dark. Bleak. (I know, what a cop out.) A landscape I was working on became too stiff, so I loaded it up with modeling paste to get some texture and then some ugly left over paint--yuck. Maybe my frugality isn't conducive to being a real artist. To be able to paint like Van Gogh, no regard for the cost of the paint--slather it on like butter--Yeah!--that's the way to do it. My Mary Todd Beam piece is starting to come together, I think. It's so hard to tell with an abstract, though. How do you know when it's done????? I guess when you think it is, but that's my problem. I never seem to think something I'm working on is perfect and should not be fooled with any more. Picasso could crank them out and never look back. Maybe that's what the genius is all about--a non-obsessive personality or Adult Attention Deficit Disorder (plus being a wonderful artistic designer). Tomorrow I'm going to load up a palette with paint (oil paint so I won't have to worry about it drying out) and really get into it, expense be damned. Moyers had a really good piece on tonight about today's second gilded age and it was certainly depressing. Where is Franklin Roosevelt (or Eleanor Roosevelt, for that matter) when you need him/her/them? This whole financial inequality thing is really getting to me and even though I feel the pain at the grocery store and gas pump, I know many others are feeling it worse. I hope Obama can clearly state a position on our problem and what he can do to solve it. Very sad about Tim Russert. RIP--what a shock and we'll miss him very much.