A long time ago

I was looking at a painting I did 22 years ago when I first had a studio. For some reason when I started, I was just painting in black and white and did these big dancer paintings. It’s not like I had a market for them but I was just walking toward the light by renting a studio and just acting like it would happen. There was a nice big room and lots of light . It was my first real studio.

I had large canvases that I quickly did these big painting on, trying to get gestural strokes of paint to look like dancers moving. I don’t even know what happened to all those paintings. I remember getting this handmade paper from Daniel Smith that spoke to me because it was so heavy and ragged on the edges . Dipping my brush in white and black paint , I just started choreographing the paint around the canvas and the paper.

This was a totally euphoric experience because it sort of was like sumi but had the thrill of being able to ruin it at any time. Acrylic is not like ink so it was like moving spackeling around a wall. Anyway it was a wild free experience that I had forgotten about till I saw this painting. This one little ballerina is the last on left of maybe 50 that I did. Now I wish I knew what happened to the big ones I made and all the little ones that have been forgotten.

It is kind of achey in my heart to look at his painting . It took me back to where I just started to fly and that is always the most exciting part of life- just the first few seconds when you realize you have left the ground.

2 Replies to “A long time ago”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

error: Please do not copy.