The Finished Rand

Now this, my friends, is a painting.



Lots of too-ing and fro-ing--with particular emphasis on, of all things, the hand and the shoulder. But isn't that the nature of the beast? There was a lot of thought expended on the idea of leaving it like this:



In the earlier version, her shoulder was so heavy. So dense.

The dense of the macabre!
Yes, sort of. I think she is a bit macabre.
We do too.

I finally whited it out. And liked it just like that for as long as it took to eat an artichoke. But wiser heads prevailed.

For the life of me I don't understand why it's so goddam hard to capture these goddam things on film (not actually film) in a compelling manner. This is as good as it gets, I suppose, but I still don't see the richness and deep colorature of the lower part of her face. In the picture, it looks like a five o'clock shadow. If you look at it in real life, it's the infinitude of the very cosmos themselves. One takes pause, for fear of tumbling into the thing and being lost forever.

In the picture, not so much.

And the mouth! It's a masterpiece of reds and purples.

In the picture? Less so.

The the ambiguity of the hand is my favorite part. Is it a hand? Or is it some kind of girly bow? The question makes me smile, just typing it.

My advice is to open the file up on your browser. Keep clicking that zoom button. Push in. Let it wash over you. Mmmmm, very nice. But don't get lost.

And the stuff people are going to say on this thing? It's gonna be a spectacle of the first order.