I would describe my depression as...

... deep.
... wide.
... profound.

This comes, of course, on the heels of attending the opening of Chuck Close's new show at the Pace Gallery in New York.  It has always been taken as a matter of faith here at TYOMP that the early 2000s would be when I would accelerate past Close to become the preeminent portrait painter of the 21st century.

Then I go to his show Thursday night and realize this clearly has not happened yet.  Nor do I anticipate it happening anytime in the near future.  Consider this (which isn't even close to the best one, but it was the best picture I could get):

Taken with a raggedy-ass iPhone, so you can't expect too much.  But this is his new technique.  As I understand it, he painted a thousand or so watercolor squares of every imaginable color, shade, hue, etc., then had them digitized.  He then, on computer, used these squares to create what you see above.  Here's a detail from another picture...

This was actually my favorite, but the glare on the glass was so bad I had to steeply angle my approach to the thing, if you get what I mean.

Reminds me of my friend Elena

Whom I painted many years ago and which now hangs in one of those bang-o apartments on the corner of 57th Street and Park Avenue.

I really miss that painting, which now, as I type, is only adding to the width, depth, and profundity of my depression.

Anyway, to make a long story short, it's clear to me that the distance between Close and me is growing, not shrinking.  But I've read enough William Styron to know that you can't succumb.  You can't let the bastards get you down.  Paraphrasing somebody...

I'm wounded,
And I think I'll lie down and bleed a while.
But I'll live to fight another day.

And of course this:

Oh Rhett...

Wait--check that.  This is what I meant:

As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again!