I can feel it all welling up...

Wow. I can feel about ten paintings really pushing to get out.

This is Waitress #5:



I like the idea of painting a portrait with no eye contact whatsoever.

This is the only woman said to have ever left Picasso (as opposed to being dumped)--Francoise Gilot (at about age 80):



I like the idea of painting all of Picasso's wives and lovers at an advanced age. At the point when they've (hopefully) lost the thousand-yard stare that no doubt came from living with a guy like Picasso. Francoise above looks pretty damned perky, if you ask me. I'd like to give her a hug.

I'm reading a book right now titled "Losing Mum and Pup" by Christopher Buckley (who shares a name with my landlord, oddly enough). The Pup in the title refers to William F. Buckley, Jr., who I must say (having read between the lines of the book as well as one can and being armed with plenty of personal exposure to the public version of the man) was a colossal motherfucker. You couldn't have asked for a more appropriate personality to be the author of modern conservatism--this, at least, is one liberal's theory (that being my own). More on this later, but I've been thinking a lot about what behavioral license greatness gives a person.

Back to painting. You've seen the Thatcher picture, yes?

I'm in the middle of Helicopter Ben.

I'm thisclose to starting this one:



Forgive the muting of the face. The dimensions of this painting will be 18 inches by about four and a half feet (It'll be my version of the Cyclotron, if that's what they call it, at Gettysburg).

And, completely out of the blue, I can't stop thinking about this:



I just shot it from an ad for either the American Ballet Theater or City Ballet that I saw in the times. Those arms ... I mean, really.

Come Watson! The game's afoot!