Freedom to get up to all kinds of nonsense: one of the great perks of being a kept woman . . .

Playtime is such a necessary and fabulous thing! I am undoubtedly one of the most fortunate people on the planet: I get to have the run of my entire silly imagination and the opportunity to document it as much as time and crayons will allow. So off I go, playing like a little kid chock full of Super Sugar Blasters, not knowing in the slightest what will emerge from the madness.

That’s the fun of the whole thing.

Sure, sometimes even the pampered grassfed, free-range artist gets a chance to do a project that requires a certain gravitas. Heck, even gets an itch to do one. But really, what’s the fun of being an artiste if everything I do has to be serious? I think you know me well enough by now to figure out the likelihood of my acquiescing to a creative calling if it were an all-business sort of proposition. Oh, yeah.

Much rather draw dragons. Paint giant insects taking over the world. Sculpt gargoyle faces and build neo-Baroque furniture. Assemble pseudo-robots out of mannequin parts and small appliances (Francine, where are you now?). Design and sew evening gowns out of trash bags and plastic doilies. Sharpen the pencils again and make up stories about, say, a cat that’s figured out how to get the fish out of the aquarium but not gotten so far as to figure out how to get herself back out of the aquarium after making the catch. Kind of like being an artist who has begun to figure out how she prefers making her art but still isn’t clear on what to do with it once it’s made.

Guess I’ll post some drawings again, for a start!

Every gift comes with a few dilemmas, it's true . . .