This is the first in a series of 84 X 96" paintings that I'm beginning now. This piece is changing appearances on an hourly basis as I search my own decisions, question them, listen, and pace myself around what shines. This abstraction could hold or it could move into a figurative narrative. I never know which paintings will be effective as pure invention and which will need to be grounded in imagery from our recorded history until I have spoken patiently with the surface for some time. We (the painting and I) often need to have arguments so that we can respect our innate boundaries and so
that I can know where I am stuck or resisting and as Chogyam Trungpa once said, "lean into the sharp points" of the life quandary. What a fortunate and maniacal act this art making is. Thee compulsion is fascinating, mesmerizing, dumbfounding. Can we achieve the gift of truth that we strive to give? Possibly, if we don't mask and let ourselves be stripped of contrivance and even artifice in our sincerity of making.
