Artist Statement

Do not trust the artist. The artist watches you from across the room, she draws you surruptitiously on the bus. The arist is a bird of prey, swooping down on every shivering emotion to snatch it for the One God. The One God: her Art. Do not trust the artist for she steals from history, from others who came before her, smearing paint and smoking gauloise, or monastically purifying themselves in red wine and isolation, she steals and she calls it influence. She calls it reverance and homage. Do not trust the artist because all of your experience and emotion are at risk. The flame in your eyes is napthol red, the chill in your bones is phalo blue mixed with bone black and payne's grey and something else...something. You feel her gaze upon you, measuring your pigmentation and your form. Realize this: You are not human to her. You are a painting come to life. You are a line stretching out to another line, curving into shade and shadow. You will be captured for her own accolades with the most delicate and refined weapon: a sable brush, thinner than your finger. The artist will still you and make you timeless. The artist is the ultimate nostalgic. Some yearn for this: to be caught by the artist and rendered in history. Do not give yourself up so easy. You are an organic thing, a breathing living thing. You will fall under the scythe, just like the artist who struggles to reach beyond her own time with her art. The artist is a headstrong romantic....she believes in some kind of permanence. Do not trust this. The artist is not to be trusted.

Trust the artist. The artist is an innocent. The artist seeks all experience and visions the world has to offer because the artist wants to know. She looks at you, here, now, and the artist is the only one that really sees you. The artist sees you. All of your faults, your imperfections, the scars that you wish you could forget, the curving slope of your defeated shoulders...the artist considers this all with no judgement. There is not another on this earth who will look at you with such care and wonder and impartiality. The artist knows that your scars and weals and weary bones are the marks of the world upon you, that only make you more beautiful and real and human. They contrast with your beauties. If these flaws were abscent the perfection of you would be unreal. You would not exist. Only the artist can grasp this necessary balance fully. She knows that without the scabbed and wine-stained lip, the leaf-green of the lost eyes would no longer be so vivid, would no longer speak of miles traveled and the deep forests it has gazed upon. The artist can see how you will look when you are old, she knows what muscles do and how the flesh sags. This knowlege is tempered by her vision of you as a child, and how your bones stretched then and how your skin was taut and pearly. Trust the artist because with her pencil and one thin line the artist has traveled that road your bones took, with you. She was there when you were red faced and squalling and captured your birth with blood red ink and gold leaf. She will be there next year, painting your face that she loves--she loves--because she knows you, and she pools paint into a likeness of you to keep you for all time.The artist is a nostalgic. She inscribes on time what, to the universe, is a brief instant, a spark in a raging fire: your life. You. Trust the artist because she is an innocent who stands before this universe in flame. Willfully. Joyfully. With paintbrush in hand.She takes this risk for you. Trust the artist.