Donald Judd sure did have some nasty things to say about painting.  Of course, it wasn’t personal, I know – he wrote the essay Specific Objects during the sixties when I wasn’t even a twinkle.  But a painter can become a bit defensive when you say stuff like “the composition must react to the edges [of the canvas] and the rectangle must be unified”!  Judd believed that there are only so many compositions possible on the flat rectangle of a canvas, he preferred the boundless dimensions available with scultpure, Judd’s medium of choice. In short, Judd thought painting was just so done.  I agree that painting on a canvas can feel limiting.  You must obey the rectangle!  Obey!

e·phem·er·al
[ih-fem-er-uhl]
adjective
1.lasting a very short time; short-lived; transitory: the ephemeral joys of childhood.
2.lasting but one day: an ephemeral flower.
noun
3.anything short-lived, as certain insects.

My work exists for a time and then it is gone again – it’s ephemeral.  This is a word I have become closely acquainted with.  Rather a nice one, especially in it’s pural form, ephemera. 

Space. When given the theme for onefourfour this past month, I thought ‘I’m all over this’.  Much of my work for the last few years has related to space, I have been obsessed.  I can relate space to just about anything.  But it coincidentally aligned with some ideas I have been working on lately around placing my body in the artwork, instead of just focusing on the marks it can make.