Time, time, time

This picture doesn't quite convey how big this painting is in the context of my small house. I hung it above the table and wonder how long it and I will get on for. Faces in paintings hung in your home inevitably stare at you, which can become unnerving. I understand why some people don't want any portraits in their house.

If I had more money I would buy more art by other people (I have some pieces by other artists, but they were mainly gifts). Sometimes I do worry that it might look self-obsessed or pretentious having my own work on the walls, but then again the space beyond my little studio serves as extended storage for my paintings, and a few of them will at any one time be on the walls. And it is part of the whole process to be surrounded by and able to see your own work: it helps me to stay connected with what I am doing, even subconsciously, and I can figure out what needs changing and where I want to go with a theme or a colour combination.

I usually post here twice a week, but currently it seems a week goes by in what feels like a day (currently? "Time is flying by" is one of the phrases I overuse). My weeks are not even that structured apart from the teaching, but there are so many other markers for the rhythm of weeks and months and seasons that bring into focus how scarily fast they are passing by: the weekend papers, a certain radio show, baths with Epsom salts, changing the water filter. And it seems that for the past three years I have always been waiting for Spring so I could repot my aloe vera plants, for example, and then Spring would come and be over yet again before I could fully embrace it (it's a good thing I love all four seasons). And here we are again.

* Post title: when I think of time, Tom Waits's "Time" invariably plays in my head.