Kamakazi bugs . . .

From yesterday morning, while out on Sauvie Island. 

Bigger bug than usual. Don't know if it is a baby dragonfly or some kind of nymph. Any fly fishermen out there capable of identifying this poor little guy? You can use the tip of my large palette knife for scale.

Was over an inch in length and moving quite slowly by the time I saw it on my palette. As slow as I'd move if I had just buried myself in a huge pile of Terra Rosa. Couldn't save it. Had to flick it away.

If you look closely enough, you'll see all sorts of bug bits in my paintings. Bugs seem to like my skies the best. Look for wings and legs stuck along tiny tracks that cross the open space. Like a camel dragging itself across a desert and failing to make the waterhole. Maybe there will be a future long-lost, but genuine Thomas Jefferson Kitts identified by the kind of bug embedded in my paint. Dunno. I do know a number of important Impressionist's works have had their authorship proven by scientists scanning the pollen imbedded in the paint film.

I can hear it now as the conservators point their microscopes at the bug bits and begin to argue: 

"Hey, that's the leg of a grey-eyed monte-nymph (a. montessa greenum) and definitely from a late August hatch. Since those painted trees display an early spring green this can't be a plein air painting. Must be a studio piece."

"Oh no, you've got it all wrong, that's a variant of the monte-nymph. It's really a close cousin called the tresty-nymph. I can see how you got the leg part confused. The tresties only hatch in the early spring on the west side of the island, so that's definitely a Kitts. He was known to frequent that spot at that time of year."

"Are you sure? We'd better run a gene sequence on this to confirm."

Anyway, it's another gray day today so I'm puttering around the studio. Obviously avoiding any real work . . .

Thomas