peace had its chance

I really ought to learn to put these paintings up without having to say anything.  It would be so much easier...then you could come, look at them...then move on without me having to think of anything...what's to say...I can't explain...explicate...analyze...and let's face it...you never have a word to say...I don't really get many comments anyway.

now I'm not saying you're required to make comments....not at all...these little fellows stand proud...they say -good morning...how are you....then they snuggle up in a box with glassine between them and sleep...

they hold conversations and tell stories...good conversation used to be required...this fellow above was talking about his construction.  You know I didn't realize it at the time I came together but I am quite about pencils don't cha know?....not just that photograph...but the pencil box...and the chapter on addition...and even the light bulbs...and the get real quote...you know pencil work, especially addition, why that was the "real stuff" when my creator was young.

though I admit it didn't seem to impress him...though maybe it did after all...he just didn't like it I guess...I can remember...long ago...he always wished to make a large chart on some piece of "chart paper" a graph...with lines and arrows and tons of pencil equations...it would look you know like he knew something...but before he could get to it why they stopped making that cool graph paper...very sad.

I was just wondering....do you know if they still make that large blue architect paper?  It would be fun to make a large Robert Rauschenberg like he made...do you remember it...he lay on the paper in the sun and made a profile of himself...it was very beautiful.

have you gotta match?

There is a wonderful passage in Hans Christian Anderson where a Danish guy is attempting to marry a beautiful Turkish princess -and to do so he must tell a story to her mother and father...one that is both funny and entertaining and also moral and uplifting...

A match on the hearth begins the story by saying we matches here used to belong to a huge and important family.  In fact we were part of the trunk of that magnificent tree.

And in those days many times we were the only tree that could stay green all during the winter.

There were many parts to the tree, many different branches and even smaller related trees in the immediate vicinity.

Now the five of us that are left are here to light the hearth each night and we are proud to have this service for who does not wish for a warm fire on these cold nights...though I of course resent lighting the fire for an heretoclite who with his ugly spirit has stolen the rest of the matches, -and now hides them in his storage unit thinking to somehow sell them later -and quite frankly I would be happy to see him caught, put on trial, convicted, and put in jail for ten years...and indeed this may yet happen.

now what was I thinking

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story -Irish saying

Now the truth is about half the time I put up a new painting I secretly cringe.  I want it to be better somehow.  And I'll stare at it and try to figure it out -which I never can.  And that's how I can keep putting up new ones.  They are all just what they seem to be I guess.

And I don't know what that is.  And that's how I keep painting.  And painting almost always makes me happy.

You know the odd thing in my ocean of memories is that I usually can only remember a few incidents at a time, like one or two,  but at the risk of sounding maudlin, I know that there are people who have made an indelible impression on me who touch my very soul and those people I cannot always remember.  Even the geography is lost.  And yet I keep trying to recall.

And I think that in some way I am making paintings that will help me to recall those moments of change when someone I've seen or talked to has given me something that cannot be lost.

crawling through to the past

If you know how to look, our body becomes a time capsule that, when opened, tells of critical moments in the history of our planet and of a distant past in oceans, streams and forests.  Changes in the ancient atmosphere are reflected in the molecules that allow our cells to make bodies.  The environment of ancient streams shaped the basic anatomy of our limbs.  Our color vision and sense of smell has been molded by life in ancient forests and plains.  -Neil Shubin

For all the knowledge he compiled, Pliny concluded that -among all things, this alone is certain:  that nothing is certain, and that there is nothing more proud or more wretched than man.

My wife and I were driving home the other day.  I was driving through a green light at an intersection when a woman on foot suddenly appeared.  She was running. fast running. and she stomped down her foot about a foot from the car.  I looked at her. She looked at me.  There was anger in her face.

I said to my wife -this girl wishes to get hurt.  Why is she testing herself against the car?  This is the same girl I saw the other day standing in the middle of the street in the middle of the intersection on a four lane street looking at me as I came up on a green light.  She put her hands out with her arms and fingers spread in a classic gesture and gave me the whadda gonna do run me over?

Then she turned away and walked directly in front of cars coming the other way.  Breaks squealed horns honked.  I had, thank god, just stopped in the middle of the intersection.  Cars honked at me people screamed at each other. But no one got hurt.  My wife said she is not testing herself against the car.  She is testing herself against you.  

But I know her now.  Now I will keep my eyes open for her.  She will not get to test me again.

Skeuomorph

As an albatross is both burden and good luck and seems to easily represent one or the other so do my paintings to me.  They all seem to have a sort of neotenicity that quality of being frozen in the teenage development stage and unable to grow out of it...they sometimes irritate me though I do love them.

ahh why can't they grow to represent something that all great art does  -the truth that comes from completely and honestly representing the artist himself and showing his vision in its strictest form.

When I think of this vision I think of complete accident no explanation no form recognizable no materials which act as a skeuomorph to an earlier form no effort except -simple anxiety self consciousness embarrassment those terrible qualities of adolescence that have no traction 

Perhaps, contrary to Plato's allegory of the cave, we sometimes only see the real once we have seen its shadow in art.  -Casper Henderson

The true measure of a mountain's greatness is not its height but whether it is charming enough to attract dragons  -Chinese poem

Ah ! well-a-day !  What evil looks
Had I from old and young !
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.  -Samuel Coleridge