Writing a painter

He works on a 47" x 22" foldout card table made in China and purchased from Target for $42.00.

Everything he makes is made in the spirit of Paul Klee who made his art on a kitchen table, which was in his kitchen of all places.

He wouldn't know what to do with a real studio; the idea of having all that space fills him with dread.

For a palette he employs the covers of old magazines or direct mail catalogs, then throws them in the trash.

Painting is thinking he likes to think. He knows what you're thinking--that's not a new thought: but's it's new to him. Writing is thinking too, but painting is much more fun.

Up to this point he's a painter whose project has always been writing. It's easier for him now to be himself in a painting than it is in a piece of prose or a poem. He thinks this is so because he doesn't know what he's doing in painting, whereas in writing he thinks he knows what he's doing.

He's come to think that writing is a form of control that tradition holds over the writer. Writing feels heavy, like posting a list of grievances on a church door. 

Painting is like stroking a cat or a dog, not on their heads but on their sides so that they smile or purr or close their eyes in gratification. He doesn't have a cat or a dog so he's making paintings instead.

He does edit his paintings, but with a different method than he edits his writing. Painting, he takes things away by going over them with a different color of paint; writing, he makes a fist of the paper he's just written on and tosses it in the trash, thereby taking it all away.

Painting is learning all the time; yesterday for instance, he found himself pressing the paint into the canvas as if the canvas has actual veins and is a living organism

Painting, he adheres to certain principles of writing he's always held dear: to say what can't be said in a small a space as possible.

Studio where the writer paints and the painter writes, San Francisco, Ca. Photo by anonymous.