om gum shreem maha lakshmi yea swaha

So I was trying to look around Chicago at the Art Galleries and artsy events online and well, just in those five minutes I found nothing of interest for me.  Now I know it is one of the important ways to get connected and to meet collectors and artists and gallery owners and stuff. You know, go to openings, show up. But I don't like meeting people and I don't even like looking at art. That's not true! Well I mean art that I don't want to see because it is in the middle of an art party.

It's not that I don't like looking at it online or in a cool show but party events, oh no not for me.  Maybe I could hire my son to be me.  He is so much more handsome and he doesn't like talking and stuff.  He'd be a better artist.  In fact he is a better artist.  But I know he won't do it.  It ain't gonna happen.

What I like though and I recommend  is doing a whole bunch of mantras. -And if you are very very lucky get someone who adores you to do them with and for you.  I got one of those and they can't be beat.  The problem is they are rare of course.  The one sitting in a chair next to one of my small paintings is meditating right there with her cup of coffee while we hang the show.

Oh yea I see two of my larger pieces sitting next to her and still in their wrappings.

Now what do these wacko mantras do for you anyway? You might ask but not of me.  I don't know.  I like em cause I forget my mind after a bit.  And when I paint I don't invite my mind into the room.  And I feel sure while she is doing them that I'm getting good vibes, man.  I feel a sense of great protection at the minimum. And I feel love. And that's good enough for me.

So here I am.  I wish I was back in the Palisades.  I understood art there.  I dug it.  And everybody was an artist and everybody bought paintings.   Ahh, those were the days down in rustic canyon.   That's done.  Andy Warhol and John Beldassari have finished it.  Though in those days it was Mark Tobey who I loved.  In fact more than loved.  I doubt I could explain it no

Of course Tobey was living in Basel by then, but I was way to young to know that.  I only knew who he was because my dentist had his stuff hanging everywhere.  And I loved it.  And Andy's show was the talk in our house at least. In fact I think my dad took me to that show.  But everyone was an artist as far as I knew.  Even my mom made cool copper ashtrays, my dad painted, everyone I knew who was a grownup did something.  I think you'd like it there...and then.

Also hey, excuse me,  what do these paintings say?  What are they about?

They say nothing.  They are not a narrative.  They have no message.  All they can do, when I'm lucky, is unlock my own mind's thinking so it is no longer chained to a narrative someone else wrote.   Painter's do not usually write narratives. Not anymore.  They are often not even images in a traditional way.  And if there is a message, some political-social something, well they are something else -like next week's trash.

If you can look through some of them and in doing so find one that helps you think about some time or place in your life, that helps you to remember something you've forgotten, and then helps you think more about it while you are looking at the painting.  Then the painting has done all I can hope for it.  With some of the great ones, by I don't know Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollack, you can stand there in a trance while you feel the space around you, or you think something like, I wonder what is on the back of that.  They can be real nutty things. Odd strange things that pop in your head. And they can, maybe, set your mind free for an instant.

Hey how did we get here?  Well I gotta go.

Om eim sara swat yei swaha