CONTEMPORARY EXPLORER

  You always enter a car wash with a certain trapadation. Will my car make it, will I be safe. There is no escape. You suspect that among the whirling brushes, shaking and streaming water there are things you don’t want to know about. Things that will cause dents in you perfect life. Things that might sweep you away. You worry and worry about these things, until it lets you go.....

  I have never been able to settle on a painting style I could call my own. Peter, a friend of mine and great artist, once told me that to be successful you have to develop a style that is recognized as your work. Paintings that galleries can line up side by side. The gallery goers seeing the artist in each and every one. He painted beautiful abstracts of life. Galleries clamored for his work.   He once warned me though, “Your success can trap you.” Shortly after that, Peter stopped painting and disappeared for a time. Some said it was a marketing ploy to make his work more valuable. I knew he was wandering seeking himself again.  Years later he reappeared and started painting, but never the same. So I clean my brushes carefully and try to paint again. My brush still wants to wander and try new things. Maybe it’s all the techniques and colors that confuse me. Maybe, painting success and greatness will alway allude me. Maybe it’s the echo of my friend’s wisdom…

  A truism is that you should never travel to the South without first learning of its history. If you don’t, you will miss all that it’s about and never understand the people who live there. The South in many ways is a land of dreams. Ones rebuilt over and over again. The walls of town buildings reflect unspoken history. Walls usually made of brick, but never uniform. Different types of brick and colors all mashed together. The walls do not speak, but have tales to tell. Stories about invading armies from afar and the North, burning of towns, rebuilding, the restoration, burning again, of great textile plants, then town deaths, then the long waiting for the rebirth again. I once walked the streets of Chester, South Carolina, stopping to watch the demolition of a building that sat in the middle of a city block. “Dreamland” appeared on the side of the newly exposed wall of the adjacent building. The building once full of flickering film and small plays, wall paintings of attendees st...