Several really cool things happened today. One is that for the first time ever, I stretched a painting all by myself. I used to not have the strength to do this, and it caused me endless grief, especially during the Escapist Mentorship Program when I wanted to stretch and sell some really big paintings but couldn’t. It’s true that I might have tried with a staple gun that was too clunky and that required too much force. My poor hands just couldn’t do it. Now, armed with a superior staple gun which was delivered conveniently to my doorstep along with stretcher bars and other necessities, I tried again and was able to do it! The result is not exactly perfect, but when I called John to share my victory and admitted to said imperfections, instead of giving me some tough love, what he said was that the imperfections make the piece more special because they show that it’s made by an artist, not factory-produced. Still, I learned from today’s experience and next time I’ll do a much better job. I am planning to stretch one more painting before delivering the really big abstract piece to my new collectors’ home next week and stretching it for them.
To celebrate, today I created another abstract piece similar in some ways to the one I made yesterday. I decided to make a whole series!
Also, I’m starting to prepare for the official release of Storms of Malhado on September 8th. Today I went through a whole bunch of photos from three years ago, which meant digging through some Harvey memories. But I wanted to make a series of videos about the inspiration behind the book. Check out the one I made today, about the creation of Storm of 1900, my interview piece for the Escapist Mentorship Program, and still to date one of my favorite paintings.
