Wednesday

I started a 30x24 painting here with Howard/Mandville Gallery in mind. They seem to do well when I paint stairs leading up to churches…I'm not going to get into the phycological implications on that one.
But it is a popular subject there. The sunlight was really playing up on the old stone steps, laid down some 600-800 years ago. The fun part will be capturing the characteristic quality of all the settling stones at their odd angles.  When done I am hoping the eye will slowly follow up the path to the church at the top.  Most likely I will put some kind of a figure up close to the arch to add to the drama.

I've been working at the duplex for the past week. We finally got the dead-beat tenants out of there and are in the process of fixing up all the damage. One of the largest major problems, not related to the tenants, was the back deck which was one of my first construction projects. After 25 years the supporting lumber has been slowly rotting away. so it was off with the old redwood planks and replacing the structure underneath with pressure treated wood. The railing also needs to be replaced in parts, all of which I painstakingly worked on eons ago, so I am trying to copy the same details again.

One of the by-products of working with renovations is the injury side of it, the banging of fingers with  hammer, the splinters, bumps and scrapes.  About a week ago I stepped in the wrong spot while taking out some dead bushes and impaled myself on a branch. Well actually the half-inch branch went an inch or so into my calf; so I quickly pulled it back out and hoped for a speedy recovery. A few days ago it was swelling up and my son took more bits of the stick out of the wound.

Now its still swelling up and time for me to head to the clinic to have it cut open and really cleaned out. There must be still part of that branch imbedded in my calf. Arg….

Salt Lake City is holding its art festival downtown for the next four days, so maybe I'll get my mind off of this by wondering around with the family tomorrow evening.

Richard Boyer