Sky and Grass

18" x 24"

oil on panel

I've always liked the Claritin ads for their blue skies and green grass. I like the still quality of paintings especially because they have their own sense of time. They ask the viewer to wait a minute (or much longer) to look and maybe come back again another time and look some more. Some people say they would like to live with a picture that is like Where's Waldo so that they could always find something new in it. I want to see paintings that don't have a lot of things in them and still have my awareness challenged, heightened, awakened again and again. Painter and professor Susana Jacobson once gave me the advice to "paint the paintings you want to see." I always try to paint as though it is imperative; if I could only paint one last thing, what would it be? It's not always easy to sharpen one's focus. Art is funny because it can seem like nothing until someone says its not, easily dismissible without words to defend itself. In a recent interview with Terri Gross, David Grohl from the Foo Fighters told about Australian miners who got trapped in a collapse. There was a small opening drilled down to them and one asked for an ipod to be sent down with Foo Fighters music. They got out in the end, at least the one who asked for the music, and Grohl arranged for tickets and a flight to his next concert. You just never know how your art, or anything you do, for that matter, may effect someone. If I was trapped in a mine, I would really like to see this blue sky and green grass.