Hello. I am so glad to see you made it here for the first time or found your way back. Either way, it’s my very first second blog post and yours truly is working hard to parley the sophomore slump. Maybe I should just take a breath and cue up something darker and grittier than its shiny predecessor like the album Pinkerton or the film Quantum of Solace and settle in for the long game…

I think these watercolors are about youth not wanting to cede to middle age. When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was be the drummer in a rock ‘n’ roll band, and as a student, I thought I was steeling myself to be an artist. Good grief, what has changed? In these paintings, youth has the tight lines and implied volume of a roaring amplifier, offset in a field of softening focus into the washes of aging, and a lessening of expectation into a gauzy impression.

Then there is the very real performance of watercolor. If I have learned anything about watercolor, it is to “not fiddle”, which is much harder than it sounds. Because it’s difficult to control, and muddies so easily, you have to accept watercolor on its own terms. Lay down a clean wash and leave. it. alone. Like guitar, learn your scales, find the progression and try to fit over it, owning the bad notes and all. Leave it alone, as Allen Ginsberg reinterated to me at a reading, “First thought, best thought.”

Not missing a Beat, here is my next watercolor, "Desolation Angels". Our pair of Vox AC-30’s are alone in their partnership, fighting the elements together even as the marshy wetlands rise up to swallow them up under an unruly sky. My wife and I love the survival show “Alone”, where dedicated, skilled individuals self-document their daily struggles as they survive alone in the wilderness for as long as possible using a limited amount of equipment, isolated from all other humans. Our favorite shows are the team episodes, where two peoples’ fates are inextricably intertwined. Thus, this is a couple growing old together, this is the love letter I have never written to Annie before.

OK. I’ll keep kicking them out to show at this year’s Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Deets and links to images under Plein Air Guitar are on my home page. Come to my show and you can look at them alone or together.