Dots or Stripes. Stripes or Dots.

Insomnia is funny.
In a recent conversation with Jesse I mentioned that every painting hits a point where in order to continue, some time has to be spent laboriously painting. Specifically laborious. Recently...well, for years...this has meant dots(variously masked, painted freehand, layered) or stripes(of all widths, regular, irregular, layered).
The conversation took a turn that put this in some moral light, but I think that forgets a lot for the sake of a very pop psychology interpretation of what goes on.
My words: "Like I've been coasting too long(in the making of the painting) on flash moves.
Jesse's: "Funny how that moral thing comes up"

A much larger recent concern of mine. Well beyond this conversation.
There's really no reason to do anything to a painting. it doesn't particularly matter what I do do to it.
It isn't moral because it is not yet anything. Supposing that anything I do to a painting will do anything is at best fleeting. I will do more or not do more. There is no grand narrative to weigh any mark's value, or not one yet.
The studio is a kind of non-space. There's no eyes, and there's no secrets because there's simply no one around to keep a secret from. I try at once to disappear and treat the painting like something other than me.
The labour is not so neurotic. Only the soreness of my back and staggering blindness exiting the studio differentiate these nights from others.

I have great difficulty connecting the dots. It all comes out like nihilism, but I mean to say it all with a lilting tone.
I cannot see the future from my studio window, or looking in to it. Hell, even the paintings won't give up the ghost until the end.