Holiday Blues

It's Monday, the day after Christmas and the first night of Hanukah, but since it's a national holiday here, there is no mail and the partying goes on.  But not in our house.  Both Adrian and I are feeling a little depressed and out of it. 

I always have trouble getting through holidays.  I do best during ordinary work days, and I tend to work on the holidays anyway, unless we have guests.  I tried to paint this morning, but it is not going well. 

I've been revisiting a painting background that I had used successfully years ago--making stripes on the canvas with masking tape.  I prepared four canvasses this way:  white stripes on a black background, parchment on black, gray on black, and gray on white.  By the time I finished the first one, I was sick of black and white, and especially sick of these backgrounds.  Sometimes you just can't revist an earlier style.

Now my challenge will be to makes the rest of these paintings work, in spite of myself.  I put some red lines on one canvas because I knew I had to get back to color again.  What are rules for if you can't break them?