My wife was away over a long weekend recently, which meant I had two days of temporary bachelorhood. I had planned a wild weekend.

It was a golden opportunity for me to paint an abstract in a large chunk of time, instead of piecemeal. This meant that starting at two o’clock on Friday afternoon - and for the next forty-eight hours - I could set up a studio in the kitchen and work and break uninterrupted. For one brief period of time, I would schedule the rest of my life around my painting time, instead of vice versa. I had two canvases, each measuring forty-eight inches by thirty-six inches. That’s an area of twenty-four square feet to fill with a visual idea.

Before I began to actually paint, I’d already planned what I wanted to do. On the bus into work that Friday morning, half asleep, I was able to picture myself applying color to canvas. It took most of the hour-long trip. I couldn’t see the final result, but I could imagine all the steps leading up to it. This helps keep the spontaneity in the picture.

Albert Einstein once said, “Everything that is truly great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.” He was talking about science, but he could have been talking about art, too. By “freedom” he meant a society open to new ideas, but he was also taking about the scientist’s – or the artist’s – mindset.

Notice, he didn’t say anything about boundaries, though. The artist needs boundaries, the same as any other professional. If I can’t keep my design within the area of the stretched canvas, I’m going to have a big mess on my hands. The border or the frame anchors all the elements – shape, color, balance - together as a whole composition.

Friday afternoon, I spread an old tablecloth over the kitchen table, put on my smock – an old blue shirt – and unpacked my paints. I don’t arrange the paint on my palette in any particular order. I use a “pad” type palette. When I’m done with a sheet, I rip the old one off and a new clean one takes its place. After I set up, I applied the beige undercoat to the two canvases and then went to exercise while they dried. I cooked supper, and after that, I watched some high-art, intellectual television (“Abbott and Costello, Season 1”) and went to bed.

Six o’clock Saturday morning, I added more colors while listening to the television. The comic book artist jack Kirby reportedly used to do this, too. Drawing and painting are solitary art forms.

Compared to musical art forms, visual art movements move at a snail’s pace. The artist works alone, and it may take time to produce a work. This work may inspire other artists, who are also going to take their time. Eventually, new ideas are spread.

Musicians, on the other hand, can work with other musicians and play off each others’ creativity with a certain immediacy. A musical art form like jazz, by its very nature, provides for timely cross-pollination of ideas, applications, and techniques.

But, as I said, a painter paints alone. The people on TV are good company for this lonely work. Real people get bored watching someone paint. Then they begin to kibitz with the artist; but TV people ask no questions.

Books on tape are also good company. It’s fun to “read” and paint at the same time. Music is good company, too - although I often find myself painting in time to the music. Fine for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or Pet Sounds - but a little frenetic for something like Who's Next.

After the morning session, it was exercise time again, and then food shopping. Back home at mid-morning, more colors were applied. Then, time for lunch, while I watched, “ America Masters: Charles Schulz.” Afterwards, I fell asleep.

Ray Davies once said of his songwriting, “I imagine people, so they can tell me things about themselves.” Sometimes, I think I paint abstracts so that people can lose themselves in them. They usually stare at the painting, and at first all they see is the abstract.

Then, they start seeing things that their imaginations point out to them; kind of like a psychologist’s ink blot tests. I remember once at one of my shows, two little girls showed me a dragon they had “found” in one of my pictures. I had never seen it before, but there it was.

After my nap, I took the canvases into the backyard for the final applications of color. I always feel that painting part of the work outside helps “open it up”. Usually, when the temperature gets below sixty degrees – as it had that morning – I don’t even bother. The cold affects the paint.

However, the sun had come out, and the thermometer was inching towards fifty degrees and I decided to chance it. By four o’clock – an hour before sunset – I was finished.

After cleaning up and turning the studio back into a kitchen, I made supper and watched Arsenic and Old Lace and then Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. I had a glass of wine with dinner and for desert, a dish of ice cream to celebrate.

I'm a wild man.