mundane events of the weekend

The highlight of my weekend turned out to not be visual art related. Friday night I ate at San Genaro in Culver City which-- despite living within blocks of it for quite some time-- I have never tried. And I won't try it again. While I like the old time crooner they had and the couples dancing on a dance floor-- it just reaffirmed my opinion that if a menu is more than 4 pages long, don't trust the restaurant. But after dinner my friend and I went to Largo where Aimee Mann gave an unadvertised performance. I have never been to Largo-- but it's now my new favorite place. Just the fact they'll kick out anyone caught with a cell phone out in the open sold me alone. But sitting at a table drinking martini's four feet from Aimee Mann as she performed any song the audience requested was definitely one of my best live music experiences.

After that, I was in a permanent good mood for the weekend. I didn't get to the Getty or LACMA as I had hoped (my to-do list contained about 3 yrs of tasks pretty much) but I did get to some of the galleries in Culver City. Much of if was nice but not relevent to what I'm doing these days-- but I did like the suburban landscape paintings by Rick Monzon at George Billis. Since there's a large landscape element to my paintings lately-- I've been taking the time to really look at every landscape approach I can for inspiration. Since then I've spent every minute reworking several of my paintings. Though I don't know if I made them better or worse right now. I've gotten so used to them being in the state they were that now any changes feel out of place. I'll keep painting on them because I find that in the development of any painting-- things get really muddy and awkward just before they become brilliant. So if I relax and just keep painting hopefully I will get there. But I definitely need to get out to the Getty this weekend to see the Courbet exhibit.

I have come to a decision regarding the digital camera problem and by the end of the week I will have a brand new one. And once I do I will return to posting pictures of what I'm working on and what I've seen lately. I've done so much and thought about just blogging about it in words-- but that doesn't really work well.