“Keep your desires simple, and your disappointments will follow suit.” - Lao Tzu · it always seems to come down to definition; for example, my understanding of what constitutes simplicity has grown geometrically in the course of this season’s 13 typhoons; altered, rather than grown might be more apt. When i enlarged my search parameters for the perfect studio after the death of my father, it was because there was nothing really holding me to my nation of birth. I won’t go into the sordid details, but the handwriting was on the wall that i would not be welcomed at my mother’s death bed - whether my conceit created that reality, or my spooky sensitivity informed that decision is anybody’s guess - I had ma cut off my hair before i left and set out for parts unknown · 1st stop France to feast on the reality sandwich of what is romance, and what ain’t. Regardless of the outcome, i stood at the grave of Paul Cezanne and paid my respects with love in my heart and a small measure more of clarity.
Clarity is what i love about his work; as a man-child artist at the museums i could find examples of his work, i stood transfixed in front of paintings depicting ceramic - of my first gainful employments was in the mini-factory of a laid-off aerospace engineer who put his 5 sons to work manufacturing all manners of vitrified clay, from an unsuccessful attempt at the 1st clay time piece, to a tiled replica of a Babylonian Lion the size of a single mattress. So when i say i was transfixed by this painter’s ability to transform one media - clay, to another, paint, i know from which i speak. Standing in front of his paintings, i swear it felt like i could reach out and plink a teapot or saucer and it would ring, glaze and all; that is the standard of verisimilitude i have striven for my entire art existence.
The art school i attended included an instructor who Mark Rothko named executor of his estate with instructions to destroy his paintings at his death - Theodoros Stamos, who instead marketed the work to the “ruling class” through the auspices of Marlborough Galleries · it is with this betrayal in mind that i have formulated and created for the past 40 many odd years of my existence. Fortunately for me, i am, and mean to remain an unknown influence in the trajectory of art history. That is not to say i intend to remain silent about the betrayal of the higher echelons of our so-called civilization. If anything, it would seem i have been thrown by the majestic synchronicity of Madame Paradox and her offsprings “t’is and t’aint” into close quarters with everything i find most repugnant about my choice of vocations - greed, and her suitors the minions of stupidity ·
Never long on visual acuity, it would seem fighting for sleep viewing telephonic screens and a maniacal final oeuvre i’d imagined to be the height of simplicity and practicality - portraits in colored pencils, taxed the capacity of my anatomy to refocus, or attenuate visual correction, and am now unable to continue what i spent a lifetime understanding 3 dimensions, with 2-dimensional vision. I’m not whining on your dime, because i don’t expect you to care, i am sharing in the venue that remains available to me - language · a left hemisphere adaptation i had to learn early on due to the influence of my benign but maniacal wannabe poet parent, Pop the High School English teacher, who also had me sawing railroad ties into fireplace lengths with a crosscut saw for $2 bucks a tie; and who put me on the roof with a towel and 2”x4” seat to choke off the drain exhaust when he taught the family how to unclog the kitchen sink drain using a garden hose and simple physics; i use that thread of learning to this day.
Mostly it is the indomitable nature of his influence which demanded i go toe-to-toe with his will, or be forever swallowed up in the paw he proffered every time he answered the door and dragged into my step-mother’s home, formerly his “lair” · a myopic concession of disloyalty i may never learn to understand, for it extended to my brethren who cottoned to, and have adhered to that exclusionary paradigm of family to this day. These are thoroughly decent human beings i speak of - blood if you will · i recount through a prism of remorse, and guilt but absolve myself from emotions and confusion i parse to this day always struggling on the side of kindness, however painful and ofttimes contradictory that feels. I cannot change anyone - i know that with every fibre of my heart muscle · my best hope is that there is enough “piss and vinegar” left in the corpuscles of my being to alter that self in ways the human i believe myself to have become would approve.
jts 18/11/2020
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