john

"john" 96" x 96" house paint, acrylic + pastel on board

This is a mural size portrait of a man I met near my studio at Healthcare for the Homeless. He's an artist and a vet. When I met him he was working on a painting of a sculpted block of ice.

The painting will be included in an exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum in January 2015.

flesh

in this here place, we flesh no. 3

“She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard.’” [from Beloved, Toni Morrison]

What would it be like to love the flesh;

to love, without shame, the weeping, laughing, dancing flesh;

the flesh which so rarely takes the shape we expect and respect?

These paintings are about loving that flesh. Hard.