Zweiter Tag Nichts (Second Day Nothing), by Jonas Burgert

I headed to the Denver Art Museum yesterday to see the Embrace! installation where 17 artists were invited to create site specific installation pieces. Afterwards, I breezed through the Modern and Contemporary floor and came face to face with Temple and then Zweiter Tag Nichts (Second Day Nothing) by Jonas Burgert. They are painted with so many subtle varieties of textures and with such conscientious color choices... and the visual drama and narrative of Second Day Nothing was so powerful it virtually erased my memory of Embrace!.
On the drive home it was all I could think about. I had seen a reproduction of it in my Jonas Burgert catalog, but there is no way to experience the scale and the true colors except for in person. My emotional response was akin to that of seeing Peter Paul Rubens' Raising of the Cross.
The roll of linen that I've been saving for a special project is calling my name ever louder now, "streeeetttch meeee!", it cries, "paaaaint all over meeee!" it beckons.
"Not yet! I'm not ready! I have to finish painting these poodles and a shirt of roses!", I tell it. But last night, while watching Simon Schama's Power of Art documentary of Picasso, I sketched some of the characters who will appear in my future grad school application portfolio.

Oh, the Poodles!

While some may see this as selling my soul, I see it as keeping the lights and heat on in my house. I shall be painting yet another pet portrait. There are worse levels I could stoop to, none of which I shall name here. I am going to approach this opportunity to paint poodles as I would any other painting, it's going to be a very good painting and it will just happen to make a pair of very cute poodles its subjects.  There have been plenty of great paintings with dogs in them and many people have an easier time relating to dogs than they do other people, and I don't blame them.
I can't figure out if I want to wake up at 5:30 am in the morning to work on this for a couple hours before the kids wake up, or stay awake until 11:30 to get in a couple hours after the kids go to sleep.  I think that waking up earlier would provide a higher quality result but staying up later is so much easier to do and nothing is impossible with Coffee, right?
I am looking forward to embarking upon a new clutch of paintings after I finish one other promised project for Moyo Ogundipe who asked me to paint roses on a shirt for him. This was almost 2 years ago, but I am determined to follow through with my promise no matter how embarrassingly long I've procrastinated.
I found this intriguing site: http://www.illustrationfriday.com through my acquaintance and artist Christine Pointeau. Hopefully I'll be contributing soon. Illustration practice is much needed if I hope to ever complete a humble zine project that I also have bubbling in the back waters of my psyche. Enough of this kind of talk, I heard a proverb recently that went something like this, "It is useless to talk about what you plan to do."
I have a new show at CU Denver in the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Media; this will be on display until mid-March. I remain very obstinate about this idea that I have to conform to one style or subject matter in order to have a cohesive body of work. The show exemplifies this as I have representational paintings as well as collage, dealing with similar or even identical subject matter, but very different in approach.
My question being: "Why is it frowned upon for an artist to paint in many styles, but acceptable for an artist to paint in one style, sculpt in another style and have installations in yet another style?"