But then

#wrightwritesnow 128

I have spent the last couple of days muted. Having rearranged the furniture in my apartment, and dusted and mopped and whatnot, I mused that at some point I had to accept that my stamina for such marathons is not what it once was. So there was one overnight sleep between the start and finish of this task.

Still, I got to hover over my big painting on two different occasions, both times stopping before the inevitable botching occurred.

Now that I have endless bits of hardboard to paint on, I have been doing two paintings at once: the big one, and then a smaller one on the side, whilst I frown about what to do next on the big one. I hear myself saying I should not overthink these things, but I have taken to the idea of working on two things at the same time.

The first session resulted in an offcut (14 x 46 cm)¹ turning into an abstract that is suggestive of something or other — you can decide what, uninfluenced by me.

I spent most of the day inputting spreadsheets. I used to eat that stuff for breakfast, but I have no patience for such necessary things these days, and so was in a fine fettle by the time I finished and could turn my attention to a second session on the big canvas. I managed to make some progress, but was in no mood to wipe perfectly good paint onto my cloth again.

So I took down the already framed piece of blank hardboard and applied a few strokes of the palette knife to it. Last week, my arty cousin (one of many, but the only one with whom I have spoken of such things), while speaking of abstract paintings, mentioned the phrase “exploding onions” and went into some descriptive detail. I do not remember much of her detail, for my imagination went down its own little path.

Suddenly, I realised that the most effective use of my time would be to begin painting an onion. I got what I would call, and called it a day. I took a picture of it, and sent it to my cousin, with a caption: “The start of “The Exploding Onion”. Enough for today. WIP.” She replied (and she is not always so optimistically sentimental), “I actually love it just like this. Would hang it as is. Makes me feel like being on a swing in a meadow of flowers.” I said I was thinking of putting some longitudinal lines on the onion itself, but not much more. And I had only started it to calm myself down.

I did not tell her, but shortly before that I had broken the plastic handle of a cheap synthetic brush while mixing colours, the second one in a week.

The Exploding Onion — 01 (56 x 28 cm)

Next thing, she gives me a video call. She was in a great mood. Oh good, said I, that means I can listen to you instead of talking about myself, which pleased her greatly. As usual, we covered all manner of things and, on this occasion, she cheered me up enormously.

The upshot is that I have decided to leave The Exploding Onion exactly as it is, apart from adding my signature to it. I have numbered it, since I will have to paint another one before too long.

The title of this post comes from the summary sentence in my head: My mood was subdued, but then the exploding onion happened.²

1. How to list artwork dimensions: Height, Width, Depth. That’s the order, apparently. Depth does not always apply.

2. Oh, look, it’s a human writing a nonsense sentence about real things.