Maybe I should put the best thing this week first – another self portrait I did today at my studio – like I’ve said before – every time I want to throw in the towel – I manage to do something that surprises me. I do think I’m running out of certain colors though – and a thought went through my head while painting this – it goes like this:

“What’s important in Art is inventing your own language”.

“Learning how to paint like someone else is not that important and you can only go so far coping someone else’s recipes”.

Marshall Sponder – Self Portrait – Standing – 18″ x 36″ Oil Pastel on Canvas Paper, 2008

I spent somewhere between 5-6 hours on this piece – thought about tying together some of the larger abstracts I’ve been doing and the figurative work I’ve also been doing.

Oh, by the way, I went back the the Metropolitan last night with a friend, Janice, who used to paint over at my studio and has since left to paint in her own studio in Dumbo – we viewed the Poussin show and the Courbet show and had a pretty good time – it’s rare that I can go to museum with another painter and even rarer that I have a good time.