white light

6" x  8"
reserved for w. canepa

stark white, it's a deceiver.  in the words of thiebaud, "...white both absorbs light and reflects light, it's composed of all colors..."  conversely, in the words of renoir: "...no shadow is black.  it always has a color.  nature knows only colors."  human vision, well, it's not always an honest storyteller either.  "human eyes are rarely, if ever stationary....halation is a consequence of the imperfect binocular vision of the human eye in which two images merge but never exactly," (k. tsujimoto).  basically, what that means is: as an artist, you have to play detective.  most of your time is spent observing, trying to find the truth in what you see, pushing back the curtain of automatic tendencies of the psyche, searching for the soulful, unadulterated truth. 

this evening, upon choosing a drab grey burned out light bulb as my painting subject--for simplicity's sake--i actually found an incredibly daunting task in front of me. so: it's eleven at night and i'm exhausted, i'm looking at this here grey lightbulb, squinting hard (like the way you squint to see if your christmas tree lights are evenly spaced).  trying to really see, somewhere in there goddamnit, a rainbow of fruit flavors.  voila!  it's a cotton-pickin miracle.