My love is blistering red

“There is love, he [Degas] once said, and there is a life’s work and one only has one heart.” 
-John Berger-


Tree adornment, photographed in Amsterdam, August 2012.

Alone together*

I spend a lot of time alone, by choice.

In my 9-to-5ish day, I deal primarily with text and graphics. When I leave that space, I exercise—alone—as a transition between my work life and home life.

At home, I read or write or paint. Again, all endeavors in solitude.

Even with this schedule, I yearn for more alone time. Perhaps at the beginning of one's life, the Fates dole out a quota for constant human interaction, like lucky escapes. If this is so, I exhausted my quota in the first 18 years of my life, living with 11 members of my immediate family.

Did I become a painter because I needed to fulfill this yearning for a solitary life? No matter, it's what I am. Indeed, the life of a painter is a lonely one. In one of my favorite passages by John Berger, he writes (about capturing a previously unseen image), "The result is unsettling: there is more solitude, more pain, more dereliction."

I am alone together with my work. It is a rich, engaging, aggravating dialogue to have, with myself and not-myself. At some point, the work becomes its own. Galatea speaks. If I'm receptive, I'll hear what she has to say.

*in homage to one of the most sultry songs interpreted by Chet Baker (shown above.)