Not knowing what to do is not the time to do nothing.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then it is to open up a tube of orange paint and believe it will emerge as red or as yellow.

The color blue is the color of blood vessels as they appear to the soul.

A rose by any other name is coffee.

Painting is the effort is to look at something long enough for it to either disappear or become something it’s never been before, something you can paint with your eyes closed. The preceding words are homage to the poet RC who wrote, ‘if you look at something long enough/everything becomes water’, or something like that.

What’s the next painting, the next great painting that can be made?

The next painting will be a picture of a big star, and the star is a house with doors and windows and a chimney, and the star will be suspended in the dark void of a moral universe made of shimmering shadows and purplish-gold points of light; and the painting after that will be a basketball in which the air inside the basketball is the central image, the symbol of God himself, invisible but captivating the attention of people worldwide.

But now, not knowing what to do, I go ahead without knowing, spread a band of yellow-green paint over a dry orange wash with a palette knife and then hose it down with a small wet brush.

Detail, unfinished painting, “Stained Glass Stairs”. Photo by author, November 29, 2018.