Paintings Never Painted

Art and the End of Suffering entails an intimate relationship with non-attachment. The mind of a painter (in my experience), cycles through ideas of paintings on a continual basis. There is a solving of issues of current work, brushstrokes, tones, textures, etc… there is a projection of potential series, and other series, and more other series. There is an enormous catalog of paintings never painted, ideas that may have become sketches, and some that faded into the ether as pure thought energy. No longer does the anxiety of this arena keep me arrested. I have learned to defend myself over the last twenty-five years.

On the way to work this morning, I was reminded of a series that made it to the sketch phase, but wilted before full bloom. There are billboards that arise sometimes when one advertisement has come down, and the new one has not yet been applied. I imagine this happens less and less these days with the technology of the medium, but I saw one this morning. It is like some completely abstract version of Guernica… vestiges strewn across a landscape, strips of inhumanity. I find these more beautiful than eighty percent of contemporary paintings that are touted as “is the conversation,” within the art world. There is an aesthetic that maybe started around the “new casualists” (2011) that is “ugly” on purpose… discordant palette and composition, trying so hard to look like the artist didn’t try. Anyways, enough about all that bs… I loved seeing that billboard this morning. I imagine that space will be selling something tomorrow.