my friend susan said, 'it's an odd thing we do, putting pictures on the walls in museums.' hmm, i'd thought about this, having spent half my life in such places. my first thrill came in the louvre at sixteen, not from a painting on the wall, rather from an american girl sitting on the floor, drawing. watching her do so made chills run up and down my spine. the same had happened in the darkroom as i watched the photo form in the developer.
these first orgasmic experiences appeared in the process, not the finished product. rarely has a work on the wall stopped me, though it finally happened last week. a late painting by manet of a woman and the scene 'susanna and the elders' by tintoretto. they made me understand what i love about art. you see, the transitory nature of our existence plagues me. it's as if i'm always sitting in front of an hour-glass, burned to ashes by the falling salt. did this come from being a preacher's kid, the baptisms, marriages, and funerals? this too shall pass, a lesson i learned all too early.
different forms of art may seem to act otherwise. take the movies, for example. they've transfixed me from the beginning. and i know it's cause i escape the circle of my own thoughts, the world i've constructed out of the 10 billion stimulae striking my eye every second. according to my mood, the color of the sky, the sound of airplanes or butterflies, i form a buzzing conglomeration of images called 'reality'. my reality and your's? well, they're bound to be different. how do we agree on anything, except out of necessity?
in essence, a symphony replaces my flow with another. a painting may, certainly a poem. my time disappears (and i insist 'my time' my own construction), the passing moments which terrify me, the falling of a sparrow from the sky. we plague ourselves, no other does it, not even the universe. we've discovered art as a cure for life.
posted more drawings. too bad they don't show up clearly on the web. printed, all the green tints disappear and what i'm hinting at stands out: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/android3
