There’s so much going on in New York City it’s hard to keep up – Pretty tired of Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective show at the Met, seen enough Bacon for a while.  The Napoleon III and Paris show was a dissipointment, it was little more than two rooms of old photos, most which only had historcial signicance.

On the other hand, The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion was a real surprise and was one of the best “shows” (if that is a good description of what I saw) I’ve seen at the Met, just for the sheer amount of optical effects and the work that went into arranging the photos and manaquins.

There’s also a few shows I’m looking forward to upcoming – including Vermeer’s Masterpiece The Milkmaid and Watteau, Music, and Theater both coming in September 2009.

Haven’t been painting much, a few sketches here and there, a few iPhone paintings, but one thing I noticed, and observation I’ve made about myself.    Here it is.

When I’m fully invested in painting – there’s a lot to say and I’m more passionate about what’s going on around me  in the Arts, in general.    When I’m involved in another part of me, in this case, the Analytics world, Social Media, Conferences, speaking at them or attending as press, I find it’s much harder for me to be invested in this work in the same intensity.

So, I guess what I’m saying is the ability to stay focused, stay with it – has more to do with intensity then technical ability.   Here’s what I mean.

When Van Gogh decided he wanted to paint – he felt he had work on it every day – and if he missed more than a few – he felt he was losing his connection – yet it wasn’t his painting that got worse because much of his life, and in sleep, one is not painting – not doing Art.

If doing Art is necessary every day, it’s not for technical refinement as much as it’s for focus, intensity, engagement – it’s hard to be “engaged” with a process that’s intermittant – but that’s exactly what our lives are, more and more.

So, I decided to give in to it – the point isn’t to paint as a way to identity, but to live a life worth living in order to have something to paint about, when I can paint (and that’s not all the time – at least, not at this time).

I hope to have some new work up here, soon, but I’ll close out this post with a link to another show in Venice right now focusing on “The Wedding at Cana,” by the British filmmaker Peter Greenaway based on a Paul Veronese painting that is in the Louvre.  I’d like to see that show – probably get a closer look at the painting than when I was in Paris, at the Louvre.