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Showing posts from May, 2020

Birthday

Image
This is a detail of a painting I am working on. That rectangular shape is the start of a birthay cake. My mother made a cake for me when I was three or four, at the end of the 1960's, or five months into the 1970's. There is a photo of me sitting at the table in the apartment my parents were renting on Montgomery Ave. in Ardmore, with my mother standing nearby and another young person, who I cannot now identify, looking off to the left. The photo is square, the original Instagram, but black and white, not murky 70's color.   In this painting I started painting the cake and the white table cloth in green because I felt like it. I wanted to have my feeling supersede any intrinsic requirements the subject may have presented, for the sake of my ongoing connection to my work. Sometimes when this allowance is made surprising connections are made, or depths are revealed that feel true to the subject. And sometimes the self-satisfying decision can just express my feeling, whic