Cheers from the abyss (with snacks)

I started up an email newsletter October 4, 2024 and I’m posting it as a blog here. If you’d like to get these monthly, sign up easy here: http://eepurl.com/dHIgT1

Cheers from the abyss (with snacks)


I just spent my birthday at the Venice Biennale, where I cried in the morning because the lady at the cafe was being mean and weird.


I paid for my Italian birthday trip with part of the money I made from a private mural commission in New Jersey, where I spent a full summer of weekends finishing this dramatic seascape on an apartment wall that went over seven feet in either direction. It’s interesting I should end up in water-world Venice after painting all that water.


But right before that, I was painting plein-air in Paris as part of my job. I sold a painting - still wet - to a local artist, and was offered an art show at a cafe on Avenue Trudaine near Montmartre. I did not have to buy my own plane tickets, gracias a dios.


You probably signed up for these emails a long time ago, and though I’ve hardly written to you, I have a newfound resolve to document things and keep your emails simple, sharing mystery and insight into artistic pursuit.

The horrors persist, but so do I.


Did you know I put off for three years what took me 20 minutes to complete last night? Merginging subscriber lists and reconnecting Mailchimp with Squarespace, a combination of being fed up with myself and sitting by a pretty lamp with food. Sometimes you just need a big snack and a conversation with the abyss.



What I’ve been up to lately…

On June 15, 2024, I started a pop culture podcast with my friend Marcella, and it is called I Guess We Can’t Have A Podcast, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. After 17 amazing episodes, we took a month break and we will return next week.


One review reads: Entertaining, Insightful, and Great Soothing Voices - I’m hooked! Such a great companion podcast, makes me feel like I’m having fun convos with my friends with the sudden deep turns into existential or political matters without the valley girl and vocal fry that suddenly all podcasts made by young women (that I used to love) turned into. “That perfect mix between coffee table voice and bestie, that perfect mix of topics between your favorite deep philosophy book and a fashion magazine.”

Speaking of the abyss, sometimes when you howl into it, the abyss howls back. I hope this dispatch newsletter inspires reader engagement wherein you to tell me what you’ve got going on creatively, or any weird story that befell you while you were trying to do something amazing. Maybe I’ll feature it in an upcoming installment of The World-Famous Art Studio Dispatch. This is what I live for.


All the best, Eva

I'll Sign My Paintings If I Want! And I Want!

As I set up my half-size french travel easel near the carousel on Avenue Trudaine, I’m excited to replicate the paper-towel wash tonal perspective demo that Gregg just performed for us on his own canvas.

I decide I won’t use color today, because I don’t want to sacrifice that raw drawing energy that makes an image sing.

My first painting from Gregg Kreutz’ plein air workshop in Paris with the Art Students League of New York.

People stop by, I practice my French with them, I ask for clarifications in French, no switching to English. People express the joy they feel at seeing a group of painters spread out in the small area the 15 of us have taken over.

Gregg tells me I don’t need to overwork details all over the canvas; that I have a nice balance of large suggested areas and detailed areas; to finish the detail in the middle and sign it.

Thank god he tells me to go ahead and sign it. I’m used to hearing how dumb and old-fashioned I am to think I can still sign the front of my painting. According to New York, I’m supposed to sign the back of my painting and everyone should just know my work cause of the style, and how my signature throws off the composition. I feel very rebelious about this. Don’t take away the moment of satisfaction I get from finishing it with a signature on the front. What bizarre practice is this? “Composition” yeah right. It sounds like more nonsense to protect rich people from displaying who they’re buying.

Please.

Anyway, great workshop.





I'm going to start blogging about my day

I’ve called this blog many things, but it’s just a blog and I like the word blog even though I’m told I should not use the word blog. I’m not supposed to sign my paintings either. Not on the front. Just the back. All these rules that take out the satisfaction. Am I being nostalgic about stupid shit? Eva, did you enjoy your years off from writing? Writing about self-importance, after enjoying reading someone else write about self-importance, might be self-important. A thought.

My desk is heavy brown wood sits perpendicular to an old third-floor window of Parisian charm. But in Brooklyn. I have two mansions, I tell people. for $700 a month. I think I need to stop telling people that because it makes them sad. It’s too dreamy. Well whatever I met a girl who said she pays $250 or $100 or $500 to live in Chinatown with all this studio space and I didn’t roll over and die. I felt like, if such a place exists for her, then such a place must exist for me. And here I am. There I was. There’s I’m going. I’m going to Paris tomorrow. And I’m going to paint in Venice.

I moved here for more space and because it is more affordable. My life is very complicated but I like to keep it simple. I need to. I’m a furnace and I’m a bomb and I have too much life force and I use up a lot of it keeping myself in check and being civilized and not saying what I wish I could say but you just can’t act like that. You need to save it for special occasions when it counts.

Feeling the music

Dear Internet,

Last night I went to a party, and after enough wine and food, improvised jazzy Christmas standards on the host’s piano, because it was a belated Christmas party in March.

But before all that, late in the morning yesterday, I hopped a bus to Guitar Center for a second 1/4 adapter so I could record this bop.

Please enjoy my cover of Carter Vail’s cover of the Arthur theme song, written by Ziggy Marley.