QUICKLY! ODDS AND ENDS HE SAID!

Yeah, I'm busy all righty. If I turn around to fast, I'll see myself coming. No snickers you lot.

Right then, to the meat, then the murder.

I'm starting a series of works on paper called "Sophia Gnostica" exploring women's spiritual growth and the pitfalls therein. Yeah, I'm way the hell out on a limb here without a net.My kinda place these days. Then, back to the Book after a bigass commission...

The website will be changing slightly in the days to come....nothing drastic, just a bit of a freshen up.

I'm planning a one man show of original work for late next year. Ego or what? I'd like to pull it off if possible. Just think all that pretentious stuff in one place, *shudder*.

That's it for now I think.....must run. Like watercolor in the rain.

Be kind....

M.Z.

PS: If you're reading this, would Phil Lawton please email me with a workable address or phone number? I can't seem to get though to you.

M.Z.

THE FINE ART OF PAINTING YOURSELF INTO A CORNER.

Commissions. Thank you all from my heart.

I truly and absolutely mean it. But.

I haven't made a dime in well over a month because the stuff I've accepted has been a textbook case of diminishing returns. I takes weeks sometimes to complete one, and the price paid while probably significant to those paying it, to me,( and I never ever discount that the price paid means something to you all.) the funds evaporated many weeks ago and I'm still up to my eyeballs in commission-land. I honestly try to give my best to you all, I can't think of another way to do it. It's just that at this point I simply can not afford to keep it up. Let alone afford to actually take commissions. The hours spent comes out to less than minimum wage. Would you honestly expect to pay less than minimum wage to any professional?

Frankly, I'm burning out very very rapidly here with little to justify continuing. So, until further notice, anyone wanting to commission work from me must get it in stone within the next seven to ten days. Period.

At this point, I have not so much as touched my book in eight to ten weeks, and I'm ten to fifteen pages from finishing the major bulk of art. I have very personal work sitting staring at me every day that I can't finish. (I'm working towards a one man gallery show next year.) And frankly my health ain't so great. And the effort isn't paying off. I detest the torsion between commerce and art but I do believe in doing fair and honest business......I have a household to support and all the things most people take for granted are as I speak, beyond me.

This is not sour grapes by any means, just an honest appraisal of the space I find myself in. I believe I'm allowed that much dignity. So, at this stage of the game I'm willing to starve to get a handle on bigger and more lasting things, things that will pay off down the road.

Ok, one more time: all commissioned work must be in and on my desk in about a week or so, after that, no more for some time.

I hope you all can understand.......please.

Thanks,

M.Z.

A PRE-RAPHAELITE MAN IN A PLAYSTATION WORLD PT. 3.

As I remember, which might be a stretch at best, it was August nineteen seventy.

A strange lost boy head filled with the past present and some vague longing for a future as yet un-named and un-guessed. Cloudland and the abyss.

I found the book in the "new" ( aka: the ultramodern idiot building) library in the art section. "The World of Whistler" one of the time-life series on art and artists. It was nothing short of a nuclear bomb of aesthetics and insight into a way of thinking about painting that simply vaporized all my previous beliefs about how, and why art was made. James Abbott McNeil Whistler was the living bridge between then and an ever present now. He was savage, serious mocking profound and without peer. Dazzled by the light reflecting off of a monocle, and a sweeping moustache over a tiger smile he changed my life. But....

It wasn't Whistler that finished me off. In the book there was a section on the life, times, friends and social arena He fought in.

One of his good( possibly his only.) friends was a gentleman by the name of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The page was a reproduction of the "Bower Meadow." To this day I cannot look at it and not be moved to near tears. Now, I'll be the first to admit that "The Bower Meadow" is not not one of his greatest paintings, but there is something in it, that for me, remains a benchmark, a signal in the dark and a brightness in the fog of the instant gratification hyper stylized ultra disposable world we live in now. "Have nothing in your home that is not beautiful or useful" his friend(cuckold) and business partner William Morris once wrote. Rossetti was the liveing example. Ok, except for the wombats and Swinburne. He was a difficult man, proud, paranoid, generous to a fault, obsessive, addict, poet of very rare depth, and a painter of such single minded intent that sometimes the mind simply shuts down in the presence of his best works. I've heard from my friend BWS that his house at Cheyne walk still stands and is a private residence.

Rossetti and his work and my enthusiasm for it put my on a path that has endured to this day. Not that I would "imitate" him, a gross violation of my own muse, but rather the aesthetic of his, the damn the torpedo's and let God sort 'em out single-minded purpose of his work inspires and prods me onward to go further, aim deeper and try that much harder to be true to myself.

I feel that I owe the ones who set out alone, unafraid and determined that came before me to honor the sacrifices that they made, and you'd best believe that they did indeed sacrifice for the work they did.

On Whistlers deathbed he was said to have remarked, "You must not say anything against Rossetti. Rossetti was a king."

He was.

The king is dead, long live the king.

Be kind....it's the least you can do.

M.Z.