For the past two days I have been cleaning, wrapping, and
packaging, paintings, getting them ready for storage. I had leaned one against
the wall, backside out, and it occurred to me that because I mill and stretch
my own canvasses that each backside is unique and very telling to the history of
each painting. In many ways the backside of the painting communicates the human
experience more than the front, for one can see the physical traces left behind
from the effort exerted in making this thing evolve into a finished product. Drips,
staples, extra canvas, and exposed wood, the bones, internal organs, all revealed,
fragile and destructible, no magic here.
It is my hope and dream, one day to have a show with all my
paintings facing the wall. The nature of the human hand working, building,
forcing into reality, a show of the back sides of the paintings, true beauty
revealed.
