The Myth of American Exceptionalism.

I'm gonna paint this next.

And I'm gonna title it "The Myth of American Exceptionalism."  Because honestly, American Exceptualism is right up there with all that Rational Market mumbo-jumbo.   Which, as you may remember, I've already painted ...

Back to the spacesuit:  The real reason I want to paint the thing is that I'm in love with the idea of the background (which, in the photo, is black) being a riot of cosmological drips and spurts of paint -- blacks, grays, whites, some deep blues, perhaps a bit of heliotrope, just because its a fun word to think about.  And then making the visor of the helmet exactly match the background -- a riot of black, silver, white, deep green, even deeper purple.

I love the notion of depicting the Abyss, that thing into which we sometimes contemplate jumping, as anything but dead, black space.  It's alive, man!  It's packed with more shit than dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.  If you don't mind me calling you Horatio.  And sometimes taking the leap [see Raymond, G.; circa 2006 or Madson, L.; circa 2010] is a good thing.

And this, old bean, is the task at hand; my job as I see it.

And after all that, the spacesuit should be easy as shooting cheese in a barrel.  And, even though it says Armstrong in the photo, I might put my own name on the tag because who doesn't want to be an astronaut?

I also like the idea of painting it on newspaper-covered canvas, a la Enron Falls.  It would be totally obscured on the background, but I think it would be fun to see the newsprint peeking through the rendering of the suit itself.

Enron Falls is a magnificent painting, if I do say so myself.  But manoman, I'm here to tell you, gluing that damned newspaper onto the canvas is a massive pain in the ass.