Maine-hattan

Maine-hattan, 2009, Oil, Latex, (and a Ruler) on Board
36" x 36"

I can't believe that I haven't blogged about this painting yet. I finished it over a year ago. I really am a slacker sometimes. Well...I don't know. Maybe not. But time management never was my strong suit. For example - it's after midnight and though I should have gone to sleep already, and 5:30 is going to come earlier than I want it to, it doesn't matter in this moment because right now, there is no future. It's only now. Only the rain falling on the windows of this drafty old house, Florence + The Machine on my iPod, the dim light of my living room, and me staring at this computer, reminding myself that thinking about why I make art used to come naturally to me. So right now is what counts. Life keeps teaching me over and over again that we have to pay attention to right now. And here I am. So, for now I don't care about later. Later always seems to take care of itself.

Speaking of the preservation of moments, here's a painting. I called it Maine-hattan. Crazy stupid title. I get that. I'm a dork. It's a commission. Two very dear friends of mine split their lives between Maine and New York, and as those are two of my favorite places on Earth, I felt more than qualified to mix up a visual that could capture some of that.

The taxi cabs hum past. The trees whisper. The sweet buttery lobster. Your favorite cocktail. The smell of the food carts on the street. The lights. The way the colors blend. The way the granite feels under your fingers. The broken sun through leaves. Each of those things are wonderful, perfect things worth preservation. But it all becomes more when you add it to the pile of things you love. It becomes part of a world too beautiful to fully realize.

I guess the documentation of that pile is really what I'm focusing on right now. It's pretty important that I get back into the habit of articulating these ideas again soon. I can't get by with broken poetic sentences forever. At some point I'm going to have to start tossing around words like postmodernism and pastiche and simulacra. Maybe later. I used to think I was amazing at explaining my art. Maybe I got that idea because explaining my work to girls was the first time in my life I ever really felt like I had game. But lately, I'm not so sure that I know how to explain it all. I'll work on that. And in the meantime, I'll keep painting.