Wow. Large, seductive surfaces, content rich, what more could you want? After seeing the Anselm Kiefer show at the SF Museum of Modern Art, I come away with a renewed sense of the beauty and depth art can have. The impact it can have on us. And the richness that is given to us by a consistent investigation by an artist, into personal and universal truths. Wow.

I'm wondering, after 30 years of painting, and I already know the answer, but humor me here..... is it really necessary to have a "look"? You know what I mean, that standardized, stylized, "look" that everyone knows is yours. I just got the new Getty calendar and on the cover is a detail of a painting, a reproduction. I looked at it and mumbled "Gerhard Richter" to myself... opened it up and of course it was a painting by Gerhard Richter. Now how did I know that from a detail on the cover? Because it has his look. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Well if I have to have a look, I'm in serious trouble. I'm too busy exploring things, ruminating on nonsense and finding out what color it is. My current obsession? Squares, circles and triangles. Hey, I'm a simple girl.

I'm watching Spark! on PBS. They're showing Christopher Brown and his paintings, love them....

Why does one painting sell and another one doesn't? Sometimes I find the one that sells isn't really my best work, but the buyer loves it.

Christopher Brown just said something I love about painting "it's about the exhiliration of discovery". Yes it is, isn't it? That sublime place of not knowing exactly what will happen but of riding the wave up and down with the painting as it gets completed. I love the act of discovering a painting as it unfolds before me.

Oh, I've got the New Year's painting blues. Out of the studio for the holidays, my easel and brushes are just screaming! Next week it's back to my teaching schedule and hopefully a new series of paintings, actually a revisiting of the World Mountain House series.