!Kiln

I hate how long it takes to finish a work sometimes. It either takes 2 hours or 20 hours, never anywhere in between. Painting to me is a lot like the time when I raced a train on my bicycle.

I was coming out of the general store with a chocolate bar in my mouth, just enjoying my day, when I heard the train tooting away as it left the station just behind the store.

I'm thinking "dammit, I'm not waiting half an hour for that thing to pass", but I had about two more kilometres to go to the crossing and that train wasn't waiting any longer than a fat bunny in a buffet.

So I hop on my bike and breeze down the road at a steady pace trying to catch up to the train. I quickly realise that if I stick at 20 kph the train is going to beat me to the crossing, so I start wondering, should I race it? And then I'm thinking yeah, I'm gonna race this mother of peril. So I kick into sprint mo-do and start spinning out 160 rpm on the crank. The gear shifters are spinning away and before I know it I'm hammering down the road at 60 kph like my bike has a two-stroke engine in it.

Soon my 30-second man catches up to me and I'm panting like a dog in an Arizona heat wave. The next 30 seconds were the worst pain I ever felt in my life, worse than the time I tumbled 10 metres down a ladder and broke my arm, but that's another story. So I keep pushing harder and harder and pretty soon my legs are screaming no more and go numb, submitting to my demonic spirit. At that point you turn into an unstoppable beast for how ever much energy your tiny body holds, and your reserves sure don't last long when you're pumping out enough power to light up a 1000-watt shop light.

Now I'm approaching the crossing. All the cars are waiting, the crossing alarm is blaring, and the red lights are flashing. I look over my shoulder and see the train barrelling along about to pass through, but it's behind me now. So I pass the line up of cars across the yellow line and zoom towards the corner giving my last bit of strength.

At this point my adrenaline kicks into hyperdrive and everything goes into slow motion. I had to have been pushing 90 kph because I was spinning silly in my biggest gear. It occurred to me then as I careened around the small corner that if I hit the tracks at this speed I'm gonna bend the shit out of my rim on the steel rails and crash a horrible death, while completely ignoring the train coming at me from my left of course. Without hesitation I pull all my muscles together and do the biggest fat bunny hop I've ever done in my entire life.

And as I fly through the air over those steel rails I catch a glimpse of a man sitting in his big black truck across the track. He's staring at me like I had just come racing out of the insane asylum—which wasn't really too far from the truth. A moment later the bike lands and the train passes. And I keep racing down the road like it was something I did every day just to warm up, even though really I wanted to stand on my pedals and beat on my chest like a gorilla as if I had put on the best daredevil show these sleepy country folk ever seen.

So what does this have to do with painting?

If you aren't crazy and don't race the train, you have to sit around waiting for the stupid thing to pass. The train is art block. When you're caught behind it, all you can do is sit around and wait until you can get moving again, but if you can beat it in time you can keep on moving forward towards your destination without having to get stuck waiting for inspiration on one project.