Now we're talking...

I had THE most productive night tonight--enough so that I feel obligated to report in at 2:02 am, an hour at which the darkeness on the edge of town ripens to it's fullest mahogony, a time at which typographical errors fly at you the way bums used to hit you up for money or a dime bag on 42nd street in the mid-80s.

I mean, it's fucking late. At least for me. But still, consider the following:

First, I embraced my new-found productivity--the by-product, if you will, of the lengthy inactivity brought about by my father's demise and subsequent activities related to squaring all his stuff away--by lining up another Elmo employee (Rob the host) for a painting. I am anxious to do a show of nothing but paintings of Elmo employees.

Secondly, and vastly more important (while we are speaking of mahogony), I ran into a woman named Danielle this evening, some time later than the point in the day at which I reviewed the sculptures of Kate Moss at the Mary Boone Gallery on 57th (as if this would be any less inconvenient a location!) , and I thought, roughly, the following:

I didn't expect, on an overcast day in June, to run into someone I'd rather paint than Kate Moss, but life is a funny thing, so go figure.

Further to this: I found myself gobsmacked by the intensity of the Kate Moss sculptures. I mean, gobsmacked. In fact, I plan to go back to see the show one more time. It is no more, or less, than this:



Six life-sized sculptures of my girl Kate in extravagant yoga poses, wrought in clay, cast in bronze, painted the most extraordinary shade of white.

The close-up of one would be this:



So--given the extraordinary beauty you see laid out before you (and I am, gentle reader, an acknowledged expert on beauty)--to suggest that this comes in a distant second to the incendiary loveliness of this woman who I just met this evening and already can think of nothing other than painting her picture is no mean suggestion.

I'm reminded of Robert Barskey's famous quote:

To see her in sunlight was to see Marxism die.

I don't know how he might have run into the object of my healthy obsession, but I can only assume he was referring to my latest potential subject.

Because manomanomanomanoman, what a moment on canvas that would be.

And in the end, what is painting, really, but the healthy realization of health obsessions? I mean, why do it if you can't DO it? If you can't find something that really grabs you and grab it back, metaphorically speaking.

I mean, really... You should see her.

Here's the bottom line: People wander through your field of vision all the time. Some go completely unnoticed. Others register something. A third group captures your attention, but not with the vigor that requires action. The fourth group grabs you by the short-hairs and makes you say "Yo! Let me paint you!"

"Please!"

And then you give them your website and hope they call; hope that this now-gaping hole in your whatever can be plugged with a Canon 620, a six by five foot sheet of canvas, and some paint thrown thereon.

What are the chances of all this coming together? Low, I'm guessing.

But if you don't try...