The skin on my elbows is worn thin, raw and red, tender to the touch, from living a different pace, a life other than my own. A sure indicator that the time has come, and it has, to move in a different direction; to strike out, embrace the aloneness, and dive into that dark place of self reflection.

Andy will soon be a story, a little tale I tell about a small piece of my life; as it goes with most things. All but the vivid details will seep back into the collective knowledge of the earth and become tip of the tongue details that seem to escape you in the middle of a story. What was that place? What were their names? The defining moments in life become those that you remember. In the moment they are just a knee scrape, a heartbreak, a fleeting moment of exuberant expression, and it is with the passage of time that they become defined as something more, a permanent part of the colorful canvas we paint to understand ourselves. It’s a picture we look at to define our vision, a starving artist’s meager attempt to explain all of the ups and downs of the journey through life. A patchwork of loosely connected details smeared together to form a uniquely abstract self portrait.

As I sit and stare at the canvas I wonder what will be painted next. I look at all that has already been completed; all of the reds and blacks with long streaks of blue, and I feel that it could take a lifetime to study the previous work of my life. Staring blurry eyed at the great expanse of color It is difficult to believe that all of the brush strokes were by my hand. The sharp mad angles, the weird intersections of colors creating unnamable shades, the thin hidden lines delicately executed to be hidden details, beautiful sweeping arcs of wild vivid colors intermixed and alongside blacks and muddy earth tones. Thirty five years in the making and it seems that it could take that long again to reexamine and understand the details. All this while the brush keeps moving, held firmly by my invisible arm, recording the finest details of my existence, the moments I cherish and those I wish to forget. Many years of life pass before you look within and see the brush wielded by your own hand. When comes that realization that you are the artist even when you are not picking the colors?

By the time the canvas becomes visible to the naked eye it seems overwhelming to examine each meaning filled detail. Instead it must be viewed from afar, perhaps a distant mountaintop, with eyes made into keen thin slits distorting the image into blurred clarity. In that moment the dark ugly sharp zigzags soften to blend with sweeping arcs of light to form such an image of unique magnificence. In that moment the human portrait is realized, a dramatic image of individualized human existence is born.

Sometimes we believe that we are the only ones who can see that invisible hand and the papyrus upon which its life’s work is recorded. But works of such great intensity cannot be hidden away and locked in an attic with a key that is forever misplaced. Those intense reds, deep, dark as the darkest night blacks, and Caribbean blues, burn through the physical and mental canvas of the human condition. My skin is a sculptural representation of the thin black lines. My eyes, the lens through which the fluctuating brush strokes of joy and sadness can be viewed. The wrinkles in my face, a reflection of the yellow sunlit blotches dotting the image and the teeth gritting from intense moments of tortuous self doubt or disgust. Each inch of my physical body mirrors the opposite colors of emotion, simultaneously illuminating the dark and the light.