WOLS Aphorisms (1944)

Perfect concentration is possible only when you are not. You can obtain the maximum concentration achievable by man reclining, eyes closed. At the slightest disturbance from outside, dispersion, diffusion, sets in. If you are erect, you legs take away part of your strength. When your eyes are open, concentration grows fainter. External, visible results increase proportionately to your distance from the perfect state. Needless to say, the most beautiful works are the least manifest. Brilliant great works (visible everywhere) are cheap, require some external efforts, give relief, but are not worth the trouble.

At Cassis the stones, the fish
the rocks seen through a magnifying glass,
the salt of the sea, and the sky
made me forget that man is important,
they urged me to turn my back
on the chaos of human affairs
they showed me eternity
in the little waves of the harbor
which are always the same without being the same.
Nothing can be explained, all we know is the appearances.
All loves lead to one love, and
beyond all personal loves
there is the nameless love,
the great mystery,
the Absolute,
X
Tao
God
the cosmos
the Holy Ghost
the One
the Infinite.
The Abstract that permeates all things
is ungraspable.
In every moment
in every thing
eternity is present

*Wols, "Aphorisms" (1944), excerpt from Werner Haftmann, ed., Wols, with essays by Jean-Paul Sartre and Henri-Pierre Roche (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1965), 152-53.

That was something I read as I walked the floors of the Christmas festival, sparkles and glitter and wind-up toys. I've been reading about the Gestural Abstractionists as of late. Juan Gris said, "You are lost the instant you know what the result will be." Andre Malraux said, "modern art was doubtlessly born on the day when the idea of art and beauty were separated."

I must get back to my studies, enjoy the Aphorism!

Peace and Love,

dAnieL-

Good News! My father is buying me a Digital CaMcorder! I know this will assist me in my paintings, in the art itself. I just bought a new book about Contemporary trends, words, and theories in art. I was just reading about the Gestural Expressionists of New York and the ambivalence some of them had about the traditional school of European artists.

I guess some artists want to break through all barriers of history, create something new, revolutionary methods that bring about revolutionary solutions. Motherwell said something, he said, "Art is to make actual the spiritual, so that the spiritual would be available for all."

I was reading that Basquiat didn't want to be known as a black artist, but as an artist. I was looking at some of his paintings, they were on doors he had found, large panels, one painting was on a refrigerator, and it said something like "I will be famous one day dad."

I am working on the second door of the triptyche, I will show it soon, when AL and his daughter embrace, his daughter is about to kiss him on his flaky cracked lips. I feel overcome with with life and art and brushes and spirit. In the Soul the space is vast and the visions and dreams expanding like the universe.

May our vision unfold, the art stand, the Spirit Move above the Surfaces of the Canvases ....

Peace and LoVE ....

A time is coming, yes, I do tell you the truth, when I will be with you no longer, in a little while, yes, I will no longer be with you here…but wait, only a little while after that, I shall be with you again, you shall see my face in radiance, and you shall here my voice.

What is faith? What is Religion? What is it about questioning yourself about questioning your own faith, or another’s faith? What is up with those magnificent Cathedrals filled with people who feel safe in them, at least for a little while?

What is up with the men on street corners with the end of the world signs they are holding up? What is up with all of the bombing and people dieing, a village crushed, a bus exploding? What is up with poverty?

What are we doing just driving around, wanting to have some reason to live, but not really caring because we go on doing nothing, just sitting, waiting, wondering, wandering, pretending to know something about life when we answer a Jeapardy question correctly.

Lord have mercy.

This is a drawing I drew on my couch last night. In time it will be my next painting, I think. A Large painting because is it an epochal moment in the history of AL and his only daughter. She finds him in the TunneL and runs to him. She's been looking for her father, AL, for 20 years. Through word of the Street she finally learned he stood in the tunneL at the train station. She falls to his feet and begins to cry. AL doesn't understand. But then he is overcome by her high voltage of love, her tears electricity at his toes. He falls to the ground with her and asks, "Who, who are you?" But then he doesn't need an answer because somehow he knows it is his daughter. She leans her head on his shoulder as he is renewed and regained by this unforseen happening in tiMe. The MirAcLe of AL.

When God and Spirituality and Religion are restrained within borders, books, behaviors, the servant might then become unexpansive in mind and souL, the servant believes the fundamental questions of life are already known. A Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Jew, etc., to be a true follower must become independent of doctrine and dogma, not be so particular, and let themselves become drenched by the miracles that happen stiLL, disattached from any canon or creed.

I think we are all doubters at some time. I think we are Skeptics. I think we are believers, too. I think moments like AL reuniting with his daughter in a work of art is something of the underground Spirit of things, something that awakens the dead ones, the dry ones, the dreary ones, and maybe, just maybe, injects us with an inscription of our own name and our name's importance in our own history.

This happening to AL is something I have seen in my daily day-dreaming, something I hope happens if not now, then maybe in a tunnel of Heaven, whatever Heaven is. It is something I believe will Happen. Because in belief a power and a spirit, arises, it somehow outlines in bold broad line our humaneness and we are never more alive than in these moments.

Some think belief only produces in us an enslavement to a higher order, God, Christ, Allah, Vishnu, etc., some kind of control mechanism to keep us in order and to keep us from going insane from the complexities and miseries of life. But I propose that belief is something like a secret. When I believe, as one who believes in something other thaN just my own self, I am flooded with imagery, colouR, creation, Newness, Life, Hope, Resurrection, a power that is beyond me, a Loving Energy that vibrates my souL.

In all these thiNgs I have written, I cLaim even I do not even understand fully. Maybe pieces will make sense, maybe not. But I think even the senseless things hold in them sense because the senseless is still uttered, taken from the subconscious bowels of belief.

...to a new worLd we trAveL, Canvas Roll under ArM

DaNieL JAmeS

Kean University Gallery

My paintings have caused some of the faculty to wonder about the artist. Some said the artist is angry. Some said the paintings were shocking. Some said inappropriate. Whatever was said, I stand by the art that lives inside of me and believe in this art. However, many have said the art evoked the spiritual part in us, the emotions, the happenings, the parts that require ALL of our energy and not partial.

Here Now the Face of AL (on dooR).
Explore his Ridges, his Face a New Earth.

Triptych of the miracles of AL, which are, he overcomes his heroin addiction, he picks up his guitar again, and lastly, the ultimate joy, he reunites with his one and only daughter and embraces her with kisses and a father’s love, becoming an addict of love and joy to her daughter, a most beautiful woman.

The Birth of a new painting
AL's face
the birth of New EarTh

The rain falls today. The rain stings my eyes. I have a blister on the bottom of my foot because I have no more socks. I drink hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts. I burp several times. I look at the triptyche of AL which is on 3 doors and wonder if I will ever see his face again. Maybe in the afterlife? Maybe in the tunnels of heaven?

I was thinking about displaying some of my paintings in the tunnel, the transit people might then walk a little slower. Would they stop to look at panhandlers on doors? Addicts on Wood? Prostitutes on Panel? I would need help doing this, but I think one day it will happen, and I will record it by camera/video.

I was thinking I have to be still. I was thinking we all have to be still and fear not because if we are still and listen, the image will find our soul and implant itself in us, like a bee mounting a flower, an intimate union of spirit and mind. I was thinking one could paint great paintings, beautiful paintings, if this is followed. To just listen. To listen to your own beating heart, your own smelly burps, your own cracking knuckles, your own snorting nose, your own thunder in your ears. Art is a going out, and a shutting in. Going outdoors. Going out of your self. Going out of your way, whatever we mean when we say that or think that. Going out of your mind. Art is a going out. A departure. A going out of your day into your own dream, an entering of your inner conscious. This is where we find that art is a shutting in. Locking yourself in your studio flat until you have painted over 100 paintings. A shutting in of ideas and thoughts and memories, shutting and shoveling them into paintings. A shutting in of your own face. It is a cycle, maybe. IT revolves. The artist is shut in but then released like a hungry Lion, let out of the studio flat, let out of the cage, of the jungle, the art then devouring the viewer with beauty, a new beauty, something new and fresh. The art a going out yet again until it is time for the next time to hibernate, to heal, to look for the hem again, to go through hell again with the questions and emotions of life, but to look upward in all things even though you look downward at your own feet all the time, looking for things to paint, for things to pick up and glue into the paint, looking down at the ants and the worms and the weeds and the 8 of Hearts in the crack of slab.

I was thinking today about the artist. I hear students, artists, talk about the empty feeling they have, the dry atmosphere of mind and soul, which brings about procrastination and lack of vision and little amount of work or nothing at all.

I think when one is still and listens they will know that they are a living creature, they will know and believe that art is more than plastic pleasure, more than commercial gain, higher than any movement or canon or class, and will come to believe in the possibility of painting while in pain, the possibility of drawing on your dinner napkin and tucking in a couple of dollars as a tip for the waitress.

I think we must believe that we are living and breathing and that some things are visually important, crucial, for all of us to see with our own eyes.

In a world of tv and screens and flip phones, etc., one sees flashes and patches of colour every second. I offer painting as a new way of seeing through to the world, as a way of grinding down into the roots, into our own roots and bones maybe, painting as the medium of texture and glob and thickness of faces and words.

Art, Taps us on the coLLar
itches the nose
Cracks the knuckles of souL
Art lets down it's braids

I hold over 100 paintings in my room, and thousands of drawings, and somehow God has provided me with space to continue doing his will to paint in there, I think of Him feeding the 5000 with a few loaves and 2 fish, or whatever it was, and you don't really now how He did it, but He did it, He is doing the same thing in my space, in my place, in my corner of the world.

If I ever visited your place for a year or so, I would fill your basement with hundreds of paintings, I would go for long walks, and come back with many sketches, words, ideas, and you would see the process unfolding, how I paint in my shorts without a shirt, my hair a mess, toes painted, words to myself, singing sometimes, classical and jazz music, U2, beginning with pencils and markers and charcoal, then paint, then oil bar, then more paint, or more ink, or more paper, or more foil.

I am going to look at the paintings, maybe I will see something, maybe I will not, just be a pacing lion, a sitting goose on my new couch.

Some paintings and drawings I do write something about, but for some of them, I cannot think of anything to write, I am not sure if I want to write something, I think maybe it will lose something if I do. Sometimes I think art is in the not knowing, just what is there. I do think that a work can gain something through writing, however. One just has to carefully decide, meditate on each one, remember things, go for long walks, cry in your pain and joy, fall on your floor with the staples and nails.

I'm reading about prophets. I've been reading the Bible. IT is what I read most of the time, and when I don't read it, I look at the paintings, yawn, scratch my hair, listen to the sounds out my window, feeL hot, feel like what do I do now or next, I become lost. I become afraid. I feel doubt. I lose faith. All I know is this, much work is to be done, many paintings, for whom I say, for ALL, for GOD, for the truth, for beautY.

I find that when my studio is a mess, it is hard for me to paint, I grow tired. But it is then when I draw. I cry out to God that I want to see Him. To touch his Hem of the garment. To eat from his crumbs. To pour oil on his feet. To kiss theM. God seems faR away. Does he to you? Or is he close, right with you on the couch? I want to be close with Him. CrY at his feet, I do. I want to Believe in Him and His words.

Christianity, such a claim it makes. Preposterous almost or is. God is Loving, Caring, Good all times, Just. Then we have, WAR, PoVerty, Babies in dumpsters.

Why this? How this?

Somehow, I still belieVe it, not in the institution of the church or the history of the religion, but in the possibility of a God, of a God-man who redeemed the world with hope, suffered in hell on our behalf. The War, Poverty, babies in dumpsters, the very reason why he chose to become human and die, suffer for all. Love.
His grace gives me strength and Belief in the Art.

So many words we can write. So many words we can Speak. Language unites us. A happening in my mind referring to the book of Exodus in the Bible. It is about the Laws of God, focusing on the one law concerning Hebrew Slaves. Now male Hebrew slaves would serve their master for 6 years before being released without cost in the 7th year, 7 being a significant number in the Scriptures. Now a maLe could have been given a wife from the master so that he may have children and a family. The 7th year arrives and the man, no longer a slave, has a choice. Does he go and leave his master and wife and children or does he stay with theM? We know this depends on his level of Love for either all of them or some of them or one of them. Lets say this man loved his wife and his children and he decides to stay and have his ear pierced before the judges signifying his loyalty to his master for life, and family. His wife is beautiful. The sex is a miracle each time. The laughter brings smiles. But then (there always seems to be a but then tragic happening in my thinking) one daY the man finds out his wife and children had stumbled down a mountain and died. He has lost those he loved. His master he must still serve for life. His master isn't that interesting. In fact, he is very boring and chews on his toe-nails. The man cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries and cries ... until one day he discovers a higher love that causes him to embrace his master and clip his toe-nails for him and make him eggs in the morning and carry him in the tub and wash his mud off his wrinkled body. I don't know, a series of paintings I think will come as a result of this...

I can be more structured, more prioritized, more organized. Maybe these are the things that I see as weakness or feeble in me, my emotional state usually dominates, and I forget what I should be doing. Searching for vocation? Meaning in everything we see or perform or present? The current condition of the world? The pain I feel. I haven't painted in a week, sometimes painting repels me, my brushes in water for weeks at a time, feel like I've lost inspiration or energy to continue with this, and half the time not knowing why I do it.

Why do we choose to live lives that shake our foundations, where we choose to grind to the core of injustice in whatever form, where the truth is ugly and cold. The leaders of countries, the minority in governments makes choices for the majority of the world. This does cause anger in me. But I think one has to believe under any circumstance there is something in us that is never transient, never shifting, something that will give us Strength to endure any suffering, and maybe times like this will come. And it is in these times that another layer of us is peeled away, and we are made new again somehow.

I am not a teacher's painter, what I mean is, the teacher will look at my work and tell me how I should have done it. It is true, students should learn technique, how to be creative conceptionally, and how to handle the materials. These are fundamental. This is the system, the code, the formula to success, whatever that means. The course I am in now is called Introductory to painting, or painting 101, and for some reason I foresee conflict with my approach and the approach of the teacher. For some reason the teacher does not emphasize creativity but rather study and practice and still-life, rendering in the lights and darks, the modeling, the realism, how the subject appears in nature. The teacher says we cannot use oil colors, only acrylics, for the reason that we are beginners, and because for some reason the board of health has banned the use of oils and turpentine in the studio at my school for the semester. I think to myself, maybe I will smuggle some in, somehow. The approach of the teacher is rational, is for the student to be successful in the art advertisement business, to emphasize technique and the ability to follow through with it over and over, to produce and procuce cover after cover of magazine or web design logos, who knows. The technicalities of painting, of the art world in general, that are discussed by the teacher in the opening of the first class session seem to discourage a lot of students, I see this in their faces and in their sighing out loud, in their leaving and coming back in a daze. Of course, I know these things are true, it is the reality of the art world, of the artist, whatever kind of artist she/he is, and must be discussed, must be made known, it is important, we must have a sense of reality and wake up, raise up our abilities and gifts, to contend with our flesh and mind and soul all day long in order that we may force out of us like a pregnant woman the bloody scraps of art that need to be exposed, to be raised up like icons that display glory and love, the artist a servant, a slave, an act of being obedient to his nature, to his spirit, to his vision given in the middle of the night, more like every second of the day. Rest is crucial, it is the healthy way to be, at all costs try to rest, but sometimes it just will not happen, the art slaps you in the face over and over, cold water, the day extended every day like the war of Joshua when the sun was commanded to hang for just a little longer.

So what am I saying, what am I writing here? Maybe I just do not want to face a certain reality. Maybe I just want to live in my own reality, whatever that is, my attic. Maybe I must learn to be humble and listen and cry and have my face become red like cadmium, maybe I am missing the essentials, the fundamentals, the code stylistic way, of what it means to be a student in an art department. Maybe, what I am saying, is, I wish the teachers would encourage studio artist as a full time life dedication, the way of living, the way of supporting ourselves, the joy one can have from it, the excitement, filling us as human, always craving, life! Its just that their are other things on our minds. Our future. Our family. Our house. Our car. Our bills. Our things. Important things, yes, but not that important. Or so that is the way I think now, maybe it is just an example of my fantasy which I am living now, and I pray to God, I will be able to live to the ends of time.

I sometimes wonder should I spend more time in learning how to paint like the old masters? The paints today are not like the paints then, but achieveing a realistic painting is feasible. I think the art that I am doing now is an art that looks you straight in the eyes, bare and sharp as saw, something that seems to have no relevance or importance in this ever increasingly ideology of technological-economic-territorial-military dominance, and so in the same world, I paint popcorn or cigarettes or ants or stones or lotto tickets or trash or baking worms or saints or prostitutes or lovers or dirty feet because they happen to be greater in the realm of something spiritual, or so I believe.

In all these things, I know I have much to learn, and maybe one day I will have a change of opinion, but these are words from me now, maybe they matter, maybe they don't. All I know is that I believe in the possibility of art and the mysterious places it might take us.

Paint. Only stains here in America, I was told, the pigment minimal. I am hungry for paint of Europe, of France, England, and Germany, or anywhere else, Australia I heard produces rich paints. Do we have knowledge about the paint? I have just painted with what was either found in garage sales or in the basement or on the shelves of art stores, but just knowing that something more juicy and delicious is out there pecks my brain like a Sparrow at a chicken-bone! Students we may be, yes, but we are so much more, we are painters in this world, and painters to the ends of the earth we will be. If I have to work as a postman or a hot dog vender, I will, if it means I can paint into the late night hours afterwords. Being an artist is something you see yourself becoming as time proceeds and as you somehow proceed along with it, breathing, inhaling paints, the winds outside your window that creep into your hair at 1:00 am and all you do is close your eyes and know that it is the knowledge of Beauty, of grace, of love even in the trees and the rain and the crawling ants on the branches, the dew on your window, the little one resting his head on your foot. IT is these things, I think, these happenings, that tell us who we are, and where we are, are here, here in this paint splattered, staple/nail/splinter, ground, floor of attic, our corner of place where we do not know time, but somehow we think time doesn't exist for us, we just do, work, scream, pull hair, bite lip, pick glue out of ear, crack toes, peel dead skin, drink paint water by accident, pray at the top of your lungs, pray in quiet, lounge on couch with one broken leg, look at wood and canvas for hours, and then we wonder, what for? But such a thought leaves us, we forget about such things, it doesn't matter, we just want to live, and someday die, die and know that we were obedient to the desires in our heart, to be human and to be artist.

Throughout the past week I've been speaking with Richard, also known as "Captain", the local homeless man who lives behind the local car battery shop. In my mind I have 4 paintings of him, full body portraits, about 5 and a half feet high and 3 and a half feet wide. I have been biting my lips over this, but "Captain" has been busy cutting weeds and mowing lawns to survive, especially in the muggy heat. I ask him, "Are you sure you will allow me to paint you? I do not want to invade." He tells me, "O I don't mind, its just that I've been busy, but I will catch up with you, don't worry." He sits there on his crate stooL making a cigarette, pouring it in, his last match doesn't light. He reaches into his back pocket and finds another book there, it wasn't his last one. Since I could sketch him out with charcoal, we talked about the Transfiguration and the Demon possessed boy afterwards, well I told him about it, just to see how he would react to it, or if the gospel has any meaning, or is it all lost. When it was all over, he proceeded to care for his garden.

Van Gogh wrote about on a few occasions that I know of, about the lack of models in his life, how it was a struggle to work without models, the demands of models, the pay, and how when he got lucky to have a model, he probably paid them to little for the time he was with them. I Sort of felt that tonight. I Hope the time will come for me to paint "Captain".

I saw a gallery of illustration paintings in oil. A man I know, said, "Why not just take photographs?" Extremely, obsessively, realistic, I guess you would label it, but I don't know. I think of the time required to paint such realistic work and then I think I wish I was in the mind of the artist as he painted it. IT is commercial work to be sold, contracts, commissions to be made, yes, is this the motivation? I look at it and think to myself, as any artist I think might, maybe not any, and I ask myself, "Could I paint something like this?" And then I ask, "Do I want to paint something like this?" And then I say, "I think if I painted something like this I wouldn't be able to find myself in it, I am not clean stroked, I am not polished, I am not straight line, I am a mess, I am clumsy, shaky hand at 21, anxious when I know I shouldn't be anxious in anything, I would not want to paint you, no, I couldn't, not now." I think an artist wants at least one human being to look at the work, just look, and maybe they even walk away thinking nothing, or maybe they don't walk away for a long while, their face violently sways like a tree in storm. I think the ultimate desire is, an artist wants to speak to the world, not just to a particular class of people who will open their wallots. I think an artist knows, too, that when being an artist, chances are good that struggle and pain and loss will happen, it is life. I think what has drawn me to being an artist is this very reason, though I know I will cry out like Job and scratch the walls like dieing lepers, but it is the unexpectedness, that which we do not know, the miracle that we believe will happen, and the overwhelming joy we will then feeL, like receiving a letter, a poem you read a hundred times, and you cry because you know these words are words of another human being to you, for you, or for the world, all at once, and the ground begins to move, the world is no longer the same, though the world may not know it, but the world must believe great works are being created by few, and that it is in the few of things that love happens, and the world must let it happen, let it happen, so the world can see the renewal of all things, the glory in faces across from us on the bus, that man speaking to himself in a cryptic language of his own, a beautiful world he has found, suffering maybe the doctors say, but something has to be beautiful about it, something we can never know, we only can know the beauty that has been instilled in us for some unknown reason, but it is just there, and we know that beauty, we protect that beauty, we love and hate that beauty, but even in our hating it, we are only loving it more.

I believe Picasso could have painted Guernica without the preparation, it was always there in him, but the sketches were necessary, yes, for the anticipation of the painting, for the fear of the painting, for the emotional and political level the painting would become ... Filtering the worLd every day, every minute, second, every crack in the sidewalk, every bottle of beer on the tracks or gutter in the streets is the storm before it hovers over the low populated city, before the chimes sound or the shudders clack against each other ... the truth is there, the truth is underneath the porch, art a secret treasure to be found in a field.

Can we hear the CrEaTiOn pulling itself apart, the pain it oozes from it's orange-white roots beneath the rocky ground, mud clay and fragments of bowls, the fried leaves they fall in a windy downward path, a magic carpet for an ant or centipede, seemingly impossible to catch, rocking from side to side on the air like a wobbling man walking the train tracks? Do the Tree's speak? Do the Stones really cry out? Do the Streams take us home? What do tribes or people of untouched rain forests think when they see an AirPlane for the first time? What is that little black dot? That moving thing? Myths and Legends. But somehow they all know that Death is coming, yes, Death is coming to their Land, to their Forest, their Sacred Home, somehow they feel it in the veins of their soul.

Many paintings are stacked and behind other paintings or in corners or underneath tables or in windows or under carpets and clothes and brushes, and the sketch books, thousands upon thousands of drawings and sketches that I will wish to show because I want to be able to reveal the truth of a life and of lives around us, of literature and faces and places and gospel traces of mystery and chance, of love and romance, of beauty and the "busy hour" and fallen cell phones and flicking cigarettes and lovers on a bench in sniffing and stroking each other's hair.

I wish I could live near a village, a true village, where there are Moooing cows, dusty roads, clacking branches, small little rabbits scurrying across the lane ...

Oh I dream of going there, I close my eyes and imagine, how far down can one imagine? To where he can actually feel the heat empty out of the oven after you remove the baked bread? Is it possible to close your lids and hear the rustling of the trees amongst the sirens and screeching tires? Can we taste the sweetness of chocolate when we desperately have a craving for one? The smell of Tulips. The poking of a thorn out of a rose bush, a little blood that we suck away. The aged and rough textured bark on a tree, and the way we run our palms over it for some reason, they seem to be giants of wisdom, oozing out sticky sap juices. Crunching pine cones. Watching the ants build up their civilization, entering one after the other in orderly fashion their tiny holes in the crevices of the slab sidewalks. Observing their act of loyalty and ceremony when they carry away their deceased brother or sister or cousin ant, and wondering if they are presenting this shriveled ant to the queen? The plastic bags that are blown by the wind and frighten us for an animal or some other creature of the ground or tree.

Walden Pond, Thoreau's Sacred pooL. I just returned from there. Where have your travels been taking you? Your Walks in the Night? DawN? Thoreau's essay, Walking? I read it walking to the work place, sidewalk slate by sidewalk slate, wobbling like a drunkard, almost loosing balance, his words were a strong wind smacking against the sails of the human heart, I almost was tossed overboard. Clenching my fingers, raising hands to the sky, the Grace of God given to my souL, never before have I felt such grandeur. When I finished, my friend, when I reached the work place, the miracle happened, the GracE of GoD Happened! The heavens opened up and the rains poured out onto my face! I walked even slower! Like a SnAiL! I let Him Spoil ME! I let Him Drench me With His GLORY! ThE FacE of GoD I believe I SAw, or the hem of his GarmEnt I touched! Read it if you haven't, and if you have, walk again with Walking, let the Father reach down and Feed you.

I feel happy. I feel cleansed by such a Baptism of Rain. I feel New. I feel I want to embrace the WorLd.I feel I want to entertain Strangers.

There is so much Life. Machines and Pollution, but if we believe, so much AIR, so much Life. I've been painting, I have, been painting until you can no longer recognize me, for my body is turned inside out, the Art oozes outward, paint all over, drips down the shower drain. The Oil has to live on me for a while if I have no more Turpentine.

“To show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
When first thy pencil did those beauties give,
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prespects [sic] give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight?
Still, wond'rous youth! each noble path pursue,
On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:
Still may the painter's and the poet's fire
To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire!”

Phillis Wheatley - For Scipio Moorhead, slave of Reverend John Moorhead, artist and poet

I went and saw Vincent's drawings, "the root of all things" he says. The line was long, mobs of people, but it was good this way, it forced everyone to move slow and give Vincent the time he certainly deserves. Vincent considered his drawings equal with his paintings, considered his art whole and one.

My friend, do you want to know what I looked at the longest? Of course you do! I saw there before me Vincent's pencils, brushes, and paint tubes, unfinished sketches and smudges of ink. It was beautiful for me to see this.

For the next month I will be wrapping up the semester, although it has been difficult to focus because I have headaches, and feel fatigued. The month of December I long for, for it will be a month where I can just paint and paint and paint. I have been painting everyday, but when Decemeber comes I can dedicate hours and hours each day. What will come of it? Whom will we meet? What may happen to us?

Life is short, my friend, love the way you know how to love, look the stranger in the eye and smile, you know this best.

I was reading Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art as I walked through the woods with my family. I found his words to give me confidence and truth, I found his words telling of art and how art penetrates the soul and brings healing. My friend, this is all I want to do. The addicts, the prostitutes, the intoxicated zombies, the HIV homeless, the old men scratching lotto games, it is them I want to paint ... let us look them in the face and kneeL, wash their feet, clip their nails.

Not all people came to the opening, you know. I didn't expect all to come. My family came and a few friends. IT was an exciting time. Family and friends came. Trays of fruit and chocolate. The art stirring emotions some didn't want to indulge, but some really looked I think and walked really slow.

"Trains, Stains, and Hymns" the title of my first show.

I do my part, only to continue making art. This is my life. This is what I am to do. To go out and watch and wait with the rest of them, allowing my fingers to be erratic with the pen as it traces the contours of our time. To come to my home and paint, to move paintings around in such a way so that I can paint without stumbling over everything.

I feel like I want to work on my second show. But where? MY professor said I should make slides of my paintings and send them out, that this should be one of my projects. MY professors said,

"Who would have thought?" They said I was quiet in personality, but agressive, explosive, in the art.

People said it has power. Colour. People say, "Damn!" as they look through the glass.

What I always hoped would happen is happening in some way I think, and that is, the art has voice, it is there in front of every viewer begging for some response, a real response or reaction without being untrue to oneself.