the answer

an original mixed media painting on heavy archival paper (rag)

22 x 30 inches

a fictional portrait, like an icon (think: the major arcana from the tarot) or archetype

the answer.
Which I don’t have. Have never had. Just places and stations, one after the next. Along with thoughts like, If I can just get past this, or Why isn’t this working?, or Not you again, or Not for me. Not now. What we do to find places of safety. How far. How surprising people are both in their generosity and enmity. Motives like comic balloons floating over their heads, only you can’t read the words. My grandfather used to say, See and be seen. But what and by whom. And what dreaming.

meant for a frame, but there is a punched hole at the very top centre which allows it to be hung as is (when framed, this would be covered by matte)

i don’t usually paint this large on paper, as it passes the framing costs onto the client, but at the same time it allows the initial purchase price to be lower

mailed/shipped in a tube

sometimes i like the heavy line, like Beckmann (a personal hero), but other times i like nothing thicker than pencil and perhaps some china marker, and otherwise just fields of interlocking colour

i also like my paintings to feel like book covers, holding some story never written

three quotations come to mind …

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
— Frederick Douglass

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
—Pablo Picasso

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
— Zora Neale Hurston

everything from my shop comes with an extra art surprise

buy from people, not corporations

buy things made by human hands, not computers

escape from the dreaming planet ... give the gift of original art