And this, my friends, is that

Corzine Agonistes ...



There has been some question as to how I justify charging $85,000 (annotation phase only--I would urge you to buy it now) for a painting that took less time to paint than it took to letter the title across the top. Which is part of the painting, but still...

Well, for one thing, no less a publication than the Chicago Tribune has trumpeted its arrival. See here.

Trumpeted?
Well, perhaps French-horned. But is that even a verb?
Not a very elegant one.

For another, I've been thinking about it for quite a while, and thinking counts towards the total energy expenditure. Third, I actually really like the way it turned out. Fourth, there is absolutely no correlation, historically speaking, between how long a painting takes to paint (in this case, less than twenty paint-minutes) and its worth. Fifth, if you look back on my last several paintings, you can see that I'm trying to take a more minimalist approach to the paintings themselves (suggesting that scraping a thin layer of paint over a highly textured background is just as valid a set of painterly decisions as spending hours and hours of dripping paint from a stick). Sixth, you (the buyer) also gets an annotated painting of Ken Lewis, now obscured by a thick coat of gesso, courtesy of Angela, my studio assistant.

Is that it?
No. Item number seven is this: There's no denying the alchemic experience of painting. You address the canvas with any number of complicated intentions; you then begin to paint and everything changes.
Kind of like fighting Mike Tyson.
How so?
Tyson used to say "Everybody's got a plan for how they're gonna beat me until I punch them in the face."
Yikes.
Totally.

Anyway, once you start painting, the most important thing to know is when to stop. Witness "St. Joan Receiving the Spirit of The Lord"...



Which was supposed to end up looking like "The Agony of St. Agnes" but I decided to stop early.



And which might be rightly titled "Agnes Agonistes."

Which brings us full circle, doesn't it?
Yes it does.

[Pinteresque pause]

Can I say one more thing?
Of course you can. It's your blog.
Well, just that the day I finished painting Agnes' face was the day I said to myself, "Dog, you really can paint."
And the rest was just gravy?
Yes it was.