One of the few paintings I own that I did when I lived in the East Village in 1987-1989, before moving to Brooklyn. I was subletting an apartment on E10th Street and 2nd Avenue for a year after returning from a summer painting at the Vermont Studio School (or whatever it’s called now - I knew one of the founders from another life). The painting is After The Bath, it’s large, around 5ft long by 4ft wide, oil on canvas.

Last night, as I worked on my study of the door at the Brooklyn Artist Gym I thought about this painting - all the mini paintings that I did right … things I left alone - the parts that I could not intergrate into one - into my life then. I could not accept my touch, my approach, my vision, was good enough - I kept trying to make it better. I guess there’s nothing wrong with that - except that extra work I put in did not, often, make the painting better.

I am standing back, right now, and honoring what I did right here (and you can click on each picture to blow it up more).

When I painted the orange bottle, shown in the left picture, I saw a flash of light - pure energy - it was sometime early in the morning one day - I remember the flash (hopefully not an optical issue) and said - let it be - the elementals told me to leave it this way ….I will leave it. Also, the light blue coke bottle - similar thing - a light being, an elemental appeared to me, jumping out of my paint brush and into the painting, I said ….let it be. Is it finished enough? The elementals had spoken, I let it be.

At the time I was looking at Velazquez (esp the Maids of Honor - one of Velazquez’s most famous paintings) and Delacroix, more for his Journal, which I read several times (that’s whole other story that I won’t go into here - I suppose the painting I might most have in mind would be The Algerian Women in Their Apartments). The woman, at that time, was my girl friend, Maxine, who I no longer know.

At that time, I let the elementals guide my painting - I put myself in a passive role, but was often “stuck”. I had not yet worked out that it’s ok not be guided by elementals - not everything needs to be “inspired” or dictated from some voice or source that appears outside of me or inside my head.

Even as I look at my pictures - that I tried my best to balance for color and sharpness to match the painting, next to me, I see the elementals - sometimes popping out of the picture. At the time, I believed paintings could serve as a “doorway” between the elemental world, and this one - but if was the fusion with this reality that made the painting real, authentic.

Here’s some more parts of the painting, After the Bath, that I painted in 1988. Perhaps all this “parts” of the work are better than the whole - and now, when I paint, I just do the sections (I honor what I did right … here).

There’s more, but I can’t fit it into one post. Anyway - I feel this work has a “sound” much like what Fred Stonehouse mentioned he’s after. Also, was thinking about Joe Coleman, with the passivity he uses to let ideas flow into his head - and that’s what he paints.

Now it’s time to finish up packing for the EMetrics Summit - I have a train to catch to Washington DC.