scottmerrickdotme is live!

 So, I've been working on this for a few months, along with painting, traveling, and recuperating from a near devastating first bout with gout. Here it is:

https://scottmerrick.me

I'd appreciate it if you'd take a minute to click around and look and if you see anything not working or have any recommendations to make it better, pop me a comment in "Contact". That is all. For now. :)

 Hello.

The mid-February Nashville weather is just plain weird. Here on Valentines Day 2023 it'll reach a high of 65 degrees today. And...

HERE it is on Friday, the 24th, and it reached 80 degrees yesterday. I went to my art class in a short sleeved Orvis shirt and cargo shorts. It's now 41 with a predicted high of only 52. It's Spring, it's Summer, it's Winter again. The plants are going "hell yeah" and budding and even blossoming. Little do they know. 

On the bright side here's the entry into my online Gratefulness Journal today: "Nashville weather, for its perfect mix of moderate and surprisingly otherwise." 

I started that journal during the pandemic and, a lot like my blog, it suffers periods of neglect but I always come back to it. It's private to me, but maybe some inquisitive spawn of mine will discover it and share it one day after I've floated away. I am convinced it is good to me to reflect on my blessings, though I remain unconvinced that society has it right on who/what is doing the blessing.

I finished a painting yesterday that I estimate represents maybe 50 or 60 hours of devotion to light, color, texture, and reflection. It's called "reflection on the ridge" and owes to its existence my friendship with Rocky Alvey and if I counted the hours of light-watching in camping chairs at his home and photographic opportunities there (which most often required putting down my cigar and/or my glass of bourbon on the rocks), okay, maybe 100 hours. Maybe 200. Hmmmmm...

"reflection on the ridge", acrylics on stretched canvas, 2023 by scott merrick

I want to post an abstract in progress and I want you to look at it very closely and will welcome any advice in comments. I for one am leaning toward calling it complete. I'm calling it "vivid rorschach" for now...

"vivid rorschach", acrylic on stretch canvas, by scott merrick 2023

There. I've addressed the blog neglect issue for this day, and I hope you have a good one, whenever you may be reading/viewing this. Peace out.

It's the merry end of January

 ...and I'm pleased that this may be the last day I'll be putting brush to painting on a piece I've been working on for around a month. It is an attempt to capture the mood and lighting in my pal Matt Melon's small detached garage workshop in East Nashville, on a cold day when he was working and invited me and my buddy Rocky Alvey over to watch Columbo reruns on his laptop with studio sound hooked up, whiskey's in hand, and cigars lit. My plan is to gift it to him for his great new workshop under construction in Lyles, TN. Here's a panorama pic of that featuring Rocky and Matt: 

I took a photo of Matt at one point that was head-down, mask-on, torch blazing...

And here's the current state of the image I have been working on. I will post the "finished" one after my class today with master Charles Brindley. As Charles says, "the artist paints the seen and the unseen, often to share what contributes to the piece's whole. I know many artists who are literalists, tied to reproducing everything in great detail and accuracy. They are, by and large, the unhappiest people I know. This afternoon I will be adding a very few little details and a blended blue glaze layer that will bring the fire to life, and it will be complete. I'll add it below this version when it's done. Just sharin'...

(added later: the final, signed piece, delivered to the collection of Matt Melon on 012823

Good day on ya.

Brrrrrrr December

 Okay, it's not nearly as cold as most years at this time but I'll repeat that Tennessee cold is colder than any other because of the omni-present humidity. That humidity is cursed in the summer and the winter with equanimity. 

On a happier topic, I'm beginning work on a new painting, another dive into another arena of complete inexpertise (there is some uncertainty if this last is actually a word, but apparently Wictionary approves).

I had a chill (in every sense of the term) experience at my friend Matt Melon's detached garage workshop in Madison a few weeks ago, sitting with mutual friend Rocky Alvey, smoking cigars, drinking some Green River bourbon, and watching Colombo episodes on Matt's laptop while Matt worked (see https://www.magicmetaldesigns.com/ for how truly magical his metal artistry is). I snapped some pics and one of them is this one:

Matt Melon making magic

There are soooo many angles and objects in this image that I may well tame it down. On the other hand, that is what gives it its interest, so I may lean more toward realism than I have really yet to do. It's never boring, largely because if it seems to be getting that way, I will veer away onto other paths of decisions. Stay tuned.

I recently finished a pic I alluded to in my previous post (https://scottmerrick.blogspot.com/2022/11/december-2022-looks-to-be.html) and I'm pretty happy with it. Anyway, here are two stages of it--the first is what I brought into the workshop, and the second is what I consider the finished piece:

UPDATE 121622:

I attended the awesome Blended/Broken Color full-day workshop led by sensei Charles Brindley yesterday at Scarritt Bennet Conference Center and Charles made some suggestions for my "rocky's ridge" painting that I spent the whole afternoon implementing, (pictures above). Luckily for me, ten feet away from me in the full-to-capacity painting studio the amazing beautiful and amazing Amanda Shires was working on several absolutely beautiful abstract canvases. I got to meet her at the end of the day when Charles gathered the artists around my easel to view the final painting. I laughed when he told them "this guy came out of nowhere" to learn painting. Amanda was painting with her mother, Lisa, also a very capable artist, and both were really, really nice human beings. New adoring Amanda fan, check.

On another topic--Yesterday my brother Ed and I sat in on a Zoom meeting with our first cousin twice removed, Kathy M., who lives in California and who recently tracked me down via this blog. Her mother, the daughter of our half-aunt (nothing is simple), recently passed away and left behind what appeared in Kathy's background to be a dozen or so bankers boxes of letters and photographs. I won't be sharing these as they come my way, but childhood pictures of our dad, baby pictures of us with our mom, and the like  are exciting to look forward to. As of now the only baby pic I have of me is on the cover of my novel, Lives, and Kathy has already sent me another one. Who's that grumpy baby?

Mom and me at 4 months old

I look forward to continued correspondence with this distant newly in-touch cousin!

Finally (let's just go for it--is this the randomest blogpost ever?) I'm hitting The Blue Room Bar at Third Man Records Friday night, with my pal Rocky, for a show featuring the Lockland Strings, a group of East Nashville musicians who get together and perform a concert once a month or so. I am all giddy and expectatious (sic) to see Madi Diaz live, as well as to be introduced to a tidy handful of other performers I have not heard, until I put together this playlist on Spotify with one "record" from each artist who will be there. Feel free to listen, and I do recommend randomizing, if you can't make the show. (Note: Peter Mulvey will not be there, but it was the album with SistaStrings I found that features the most of them.)

Cheers! Have a lovely Winter Holidays season! 

Wait! I want to share that Thursday night we'll be attending "A Sonos Christmas," live at the Parthenon and getting to hear our marvelous, beautiful, talented, and, well, perfect daughter Miranda sing. She auditioned for the choir a couple months ago and was embraced into it, happily. Although I had the pleasure of attending the Timbre Cierpke Christmas Concert at a Nashville church this past Thursday and got to hear her sing, my honey has not and I couldn't be more excited to sit at the base of the golden Athena and share that experience with my life's love. Well, I couldn't be more excited until Friday at the Blue Room!

Now go be good and have fun!