i am matroishka

I call her Hailey because her eyes are an intense green/yellow like the cover of the latest Mark Z. Danielewski epic. She is a symbol of eternal youth, forever bathing in sunlight on a beach. Sounds sexy? She actually looks dangerously young, but that's besides the point. I painted her; she is a figment of my imagination that manifested herself into my reality. I think all painters must feel like this after they have created something special. After two miserable painting attempts, I was finally able to paint something coherent. To anyone but her and I, the painting holds no more depth than a pretty picture. But to us, it was an exploration of colour, texture and detail the likes of which I had never experienced before.

Most of my previous works have been in charcoal, pencil, basically just black and white because I was afraid of paint, and pencil crayons and pastels could never produce the richness I demanded. Painting always intimidated me because of its absolute Thereness. Paintings are sold for hundreds to thousands to millions of dollars and are hung in people's homes, museums and galleries. They are masterpieces. How many doodles and drawings ever make it on to people's walls? Probably more than I suspect, but still, there is something very intimidating about paint. And my previous attempts failed because I never knew what I wanted to paint. I would sit there with all my little squiggle squeezes of paint lined up in a row and I would paint a little here and paint a little there, but when no coherent idea formed on the canvas, I would get discouraged.

Last week, I was chatting with my manager, Jen, about painting and she said she was surprised that I didn't paint because I was such a good drawer. And as OBVIOUS as that may seem, it really never occurred to **me** that I could paint over my drawings. Stupid, right? I thought I had to paint from scratch, when the very simple key to unlocking my ability to paint has always been there.

So I drew a very simplistic sketch of what would eventually become Hailey, and the process of painting took on a life of its own.

Hailey isn't finished yet, but is very close. I worked on her all day on Saturday and I still haven't figured out where exactly she is yet, and I haven't quite finished her skin and lips. They lack depth. When she's finished, I will surely share her with you, my friends, with the help of our amazing new HP scanner/printer/photo printer.

I'm excited to get a few other paintings going at the same time because I know myself and I know I'll need at least two or three going at any given time to keep me interested. However, my apartment is too dark, and there simply are not enough hours of sunlight in the day to satisfy my cravings to create. I'm seriously considering investing in some proper lighting, although I just paid off my Christmas credit card bill and am not really in a good position to do so.

Oh, and I want to paint matroishkas (Russian nesting dolls). My friend, Jen, has a friend who works at Loomis and can get me a discount. Blank ones are surprisingly expensive.