Recently I’ve been drawn to paintings that feel like they’re right on the verge of falling apart. A tattered blanket that’s been in a family home’s circulation for years and will never die. It's related to touch—I’ve become repelled by sheen, gloss, smooth buttery blends, impressive flash-bang facades. Maybe one day I’ll come back around to searching for the fickle alien in Technique, but currently I can’t visualize it. It’s receding too quickly in the rearview. Give me instead a home in Daumier's Don Quixote and Sancho Panza sketch. Or Mamma Andersson’s Swannery. A hand making marks, roving around, touching and touching and remembering and forgetting in a state of pulsing affirmation. This rigid, dumb, loud, deceptive, botoxed moment needs rough, dirty, loose, economical, quiet, humble maps. With space to breathe and a steady beat. I’ve been painting to D’Angelo’s Voodoo.
And last week there was a 120 hour stretch of only Elliott Smith. I was (happily) stuck in his world. It’s known that he was big on The Beatles, and I couldn’t help but notice that he carried on their tradition of peppering the message with genre paintings. “Michelle,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Lovely Rita,” “Martha My Dear,” “Rocky Raccoon,” “Julia,” etc. Elliott has “Clementine,” “Sweet Adeline,” “Amity,” “Pretty Mary Kay,” etc. Imagined models in specific situations speaking to big ideas. This equation tastes right to me in my own realm right now. Duty free came about that way when being nose to nose with love made me think globally.