Funny how things work but while I often saw myself standing before Mount Saint Victoire and painted my friend Christine Boulet there, I had not painted myself in front of the great mountain and favorite landscape motif of Paul Cezanne.

Actually I did paint myself against Mount Saint Victoire yesterday but it did not come out quite the way I wanted, nonetheless, I’m posting a image of my painting here.  I had envisioned myself as being more inspired, yet what I communicate here was a feeling of being annoyed or perplexed and the mountain was much more superficially treated than I originally intended. 

But then again, I was trying to paint myself from the mirror and also the landscape from a movie I made - because my picture in the movie was too blurry to really do a good portrait - not that this portrait below is that great - again it’s a one sitting painting.

After meeting with Drew Knapp last night - I’d look at my work more critically, but then again, I have to take in information yet make my own decision on what’s right for me - I’ve decided that I can continue to work as I have, quickly, but also work on some paintings more than one sitting - in other words - I’ll try walking the Middle Path.

Actually, there’s a weird story with the St. Victoire portraits I’ve done - I sent the two I did of Christine Boulet to her a couple of months ago - but no one told me about the tax on imported goods (it just never occurred to me as this is the first time I sent anything to another country); when I shipped my two paintings to Christine I declared a value of 1000 dollars on them and she just got a bill for 163 Euros … and I never even insured the paintings.

Had I known, I’d have put a value of 0 dollars on them though that doesn’t quite feel right either - they were done our of friendship and have value - but a dollar value, what I picked was arbitrary.

However, it brings up an interesting point - let’s say I had written in 10,000 dollars instead of 1,000 dollars as the value of my paintings - nothing would have stopped me from doing that …right?   And in accepting them, they’d be taxed in France for 1600 Euros!  And yet, there’s be just me, putting down a number that came into my head.

Now, I’ll try to fix this - if I can, with FedEx tomorrow - but the reality is that I might not be able to do so.  

Just another example of money and value being created out of thin air.

I painted today and found myself, again, going in a direction of pushing color, of making color that “thinks”.    I knew what I wanted to achieve, and when I got it - I stopped.

Here’s the result, below, which is sorta, a self portrait.