One Story

Do you ever worry that you're only capable of telling one story?


That's where I find myself today. I'm taking a fiction class for which I've written a couple of short stories, and when I think about them in relation to my paintings, I worry that they all say the same things.

My short stories are both descent tales-- or at least, I intended them to be so. They both follow characters who get sucked into a world that they don't trust. They can see the cracks in the reality presented to them, and at first they rebel-- insisting on remaining in the world they know. But over time the new reality seduces them, and they forgive its crooked seams and become hooked. They have compromised.

I'd love to take viewers of my paintings on that kind of a journey. After I analyzed my short stories, I imagined a person walking up to one of my works. At first, they hold it at arm's length-- it's a painting, it's not real, and they can see the areas where it's just not convincing enough to take them away from reality. The images are strange, there's a note of menace in the atmosphere. But the painting demands to be looked at, and soon the viewer is studying it, trying to make sense of it--then accepting that they probably won't, accepting the painting, living in it.

I'm not there yet. Someday I'd love to be.


I'm continuing to work on my grant paintings, and I'll probably take some in-progress pictures today. I'm also working on some intense pieces for Advanced Painting. These two pursuits are feeding each other in exciting ways intellectually, but snatching meat from each other's jaws time-wise.

Let's all go look at cool paintings at the BFA show , "Gamut" this Friday!