Jotted on a tram.

I was on the way to have some tests done related to my eye (keratitis since January 17—such a drag not being able to see clearly) and was suddenly struck by the urge to write this about the paintings I have been doing. It's not very well-written but I'm glad it's beginning to crystallize.

The paintings are about me. Rather, they are a denial of the artificial, the mistaken identity with which I try to reconcile myself every day. Everything about them—the superficial scumbling of paint, their perspectival flatness countered by illusions of volume; the subject matter of volcanoes, which are by nature demonstrative, referential to some profound subterranean energy, with festering, dangerous tension; and finally, the act of painting itself: reiterative, contemplative, a mantra—all of these things are attempting to permeate the hard crust of "identity."