"Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly"

8"X 8" oil on masonite

I was thinking about Francoise and le fromage bleu, et cette petit chien bleu, Dilly, and being fascinated by my extended French family actually eating big chunks of ripe/fragrant/slightly (and maybe this is my imagination) petulant blue cheese, and what's more, appearing not to be faking their pleasure when they'd say, "That cheese really tasted good."

Because for me, I was always really faking it when I'd say, w/r/t foul-smelling cheese, "Oh this Pont l'Eveque is just fabulous!" And then I'd privately spit it out into my napkin, as I naturally assumed everyone else was doing too. This was all before Natacha gave me the simple excercise of taking just a bit of blue cheese, on top of a wedge of butter, on top of a cracker, and eating that, and I've got to tell you, it felt like the way I felt the first time I rode a bicycle without training wheels- I was like, "Holy crap! I'm actually doing this! I'm eating and enjoying blue cheese!" And now, I don't understand how anybody can really have any particular aversion to anything culinary anyhow. It's all just a big fetid playground; and for me, the world is now full of food I don't like yet; I just need some time to figure out the secret way to eat it. (Additionally, I'm always kind of laughing whenever I eat cheese now anyway because I'll invariably think of last Christmas when Mireille referred to cheese as "stool hardener," which is hilarious.)

And by the way- I'm also going to be showing some paintings at the Oceanside Gallery for the month of April with my friend Tony Kirby. We're each showing some recent paintings, and although we work a bit differently, we've got a collaborative piece that we've been trading off to each other every week for the past few weeks, and the last time it was in my studio, I must admit, the painting was really starting to take an odd, if not entirely unpleasing shape. But anyway we've got another couple of weeks to fix it up before the opening reception, which is on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 7PM- and I certainly hope to see you there.