Summer 2010

I paint in my “little space”. A small 4’x4’x4’ area. A small little cube, cut through all of the junk and clutter. This one little space. My space. It is very dark, usually only lit by a small string of Christmas lights. I like it dark. I do not turn on the main lights until I am done. I sit Indian style for hours. I let myself move with music, but usually I am glued a mere three inches from the paper and paint. I clean my brush on my pant leg or use the stigmata points in my hands to mix and blend before applying in gentle and purposeful stroke. Finally by about 5:00am I at least start to think that maybe I could be done. I walk away to smoke a cigarette and scrutinize it from a distance. I say, “Ok, I think I’m done. I’m not going to touch it,” about three or four times. Each time I see an eyelash in the wrong place, the flow is misdirected, that’s the wrong hue. The worst eyesore is unbalance. Pieces being where they shouldn’t. They need to be where it makes your eye feel good to look at it, comfortable. I run back and kneel before it only to attack and apply a corrective stroke. By 5:45 I’m wrapping up. Smoking that last cigarette of the night. I then take a few deep breaths and masochistically relish in the anxiety and excitement I am inflicting on myself. It is dark, rods are working harder then cones, color intensity is low, and detail faint. Then I turn on the lights… In a flash, in a blink, in fractions of a second, the color shoots out from the canvas and stimulates cones which allows me to perceive the various crimson hues. To acknowledge the shadows that make the expression. The feeling. I get to see what the muscles in my face have looked like for the past five hours. It’s the first time I really get to see her. To meet my subject and have a bit more insight. 

(2005) Acrylic paint on human canvas. That is me at the bottom. I painted those on myself. Mirrors and stretching.