I took Roy the gallery owner some of my homemade Gang dang curry yesterday. He's fun, I enjoy our conversations of art like nobodies business. I took in mom's egg gathering lady to get an estimate on framing. He's only seen my atmostpheres, and colorfield works to that point.

"Madrigle, is this your work?" In a shocked, you did this? sort of way.

"Um, yeah. It's a interpretation of a work by the Utah artist, Gary Ernest Smith."

"You really should do more figurative work. This is great."

The conversation peetered on, basically saying that this kind of work would be very marketable. He tried to coax me to his viewpoint by saying that I could still use my build up of color in these figurative works. Basically telling me to murge the two. He also told me that my atmospheric paintings are stunning, but that they are practically unmarkatable because of their size and subject matter.

I've toyed with hiring models for figurative work prior to this conversation. Palmer's class got me hooked on using the human figure as a form. But somehow it seems dirty to do this just cause they would be more markatable. I don't know. I mean I need a break from big paintings after I finish the center panel for the oort cloud series, maybe I really should work on abstracting the human form. It would be a new direction to work within for a while.

Roy came over at six to pic me up to go meet Buffy at a gallery opening. We ended up talking about painting for nearly 2 hours. I'd be lieing if I didn't admit it was hot! If we didnt' have the evening social obligations we were about to throw down some canvases and start painting together. His criticisms are invaluable, he notices things in pieces I'm workin on that I never think of.

Joel, emailed me Thursday explaining a friend was in town, that he would 'try' to call me that evening. He didn't. He didn't all week. I called once on tuesday and resisted to call everyday till he returned my call. I emailed him back on Friday asking if I had 'missed' his call Thursday night. He called Friday night, I didn't pick up, I was working at the gallery opening and having a grand time. It stung a bit when people would ask if I was a artist and if my pieces were here. Oh well. Back to Joel. I called him back at 10 when I was on the way home. Explained three times that I was working at Roy's gallery that evening. He said he was doing laundry and proceeded to outline his itenerary for the weekend. A madrigleless weekend. Que sara, or however you spell that. I really don't want to be a bitter man, but it's not hard to think in terms of "I really should have expected as much."

Love to you.