Solitude on Loan

People are always so boring when they band together. You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies that make a person interesting.

- Andy Warhol

I need solitude to draw or paint. I need to be in a room by myself, preferably a house by myself. Interruptions are frustrating and annoying and make me lose my train of thought or come out of that lovely place that I've escaped to where the rest of the world disappears and just what I am creating is in my mind. It is almost as if I become part of the drawing. It truly does have a sort of trance-like effect.

I came across an article in the LA Times about a couple who will open their house to writers to provide that much needed solitude to create. I like that idea. Laguna Beach here I come. I already have the beach rocks.

This is another study of beach pebbles collected from Ferryland on the southern shore
I can't resist picking up pebbles and shells or the prickly remains of sea urchins. Their brittle spines crumble at the slightest touch, like chocolate sprinkles at the first bite of a cupcake. Phantom crabs, their contents long eaten by seagulls or dessicated by the wind and sun surface on the cool grey pebbles. They are ghosts of the sea, along with the urchins. Now fragile and brittle with time and the elements, their colours seem false as if something long dead should not have the glow of life still about it.

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