I finally got my garlic planted...some of it, anyway. I didn't have enough room prepared to plant all the regular sized garlic, but I did get all the elephant garlic in the ground and a little of the standard type.

I'm eating some Haagen Dazs ice cream right now, eggnog flavor. It is so incredibly good that it's almost orgasmic. Oh mannnnn...... Mmmmmm. Ohhhh...I didn't know ice cream could be this good. Even Ben and Jerry's isn't this good. Eeeek! OK, that is enough..I'm getting brain freeze. I'll save the rest of it for when I'm depressed and pessimistic again.

People who know me might be surprised to hear that I experience that sort of extreme pleasure on a very regular basis. Taste....smells.....and particularly visuals, especially colors. Flowers are especially good for color, because of the depth and intensity of the hue. When I see a color that does that for me, it seems to throb and my brain glows with pleasure.....it's almost like getting high (except I never do *that*). The shape, the form, those are OK, but the color is what really hits me. My paintings are like that, too. They have objects- a peach, a flower, a piece of fruit....but it's really about color. My backgrounds are often as bright or brighter than the subject, and the intensity of the color is the type that feeds my brain- it's intense and often pure pigment right from the tube. I don't think other people who look at my work understand that. They see the piece of fruit or whatever and they're looking for a photo-realistic likeness, which was never, ever my intent. It was about color. The subject was only the means of conveying the color, not the point of the painting.

It irritates me when people look at my art and tell me what they think it means or make stupid assumptions. If they want to know what I meant, why don't they ask? They can't read my mind or know what I was thinking or what it is (if the work is not representational). Oh well. That is why if I ever exhibit my work (again) and get reviews or publicity, I don't even want to read it. It would just annoy me.