what remains....

detail from the studio floor, yellow haus,  2013.

when the paintings are packed up and moved to perfect clean white exhibition space...

studio floor at the yellow haus, 2013

and what is left behind: accumulated marks and gestures scrapped, dripped, splattered, and sanded off & ground into the studio floor, creating spots of elegant little beauties...that at times rival the work made from the paint that stayed put on canvas and panel. & they, these incidental paintings, minor byproducts inspire new paintings and the dance continues.

"...in painting there was never ever anything to do.

Why not recognize, once and for all, that the paintbrush is an ineffective instrument? It's like taking on the cosmos, bursting with colours, using a simple toothbrush. No art is so poor in expression. Painting is the equivalent of giving up on everything that cannot be painted."

Gombrowicz, in a dream, to Rimbaud and Wittgenstein from Bartleby & Co. by Vila-Mata.

"95 Theses on Painting" by Molly Zuckerman-Hartung


I found an excerpt & link to Mary Zuckerman-Hartung's 95 Theses at the great TwoCoatsofPaint last week and have found myself carrying fragments of the text around in my pocket since reading & notating. The whole of the list resonates with many things I have been thinking about my own painting practice and with quotes and excerpts form various writers and poets that articulate a similar idea. Here is one example , I will post more fragments soon.

excerpt from "The 95 Theses on Painting" by Molly Zuckerman-Hartung

Here is a link to the entire document.