Map Of Troy (The White Whale)

Painted as part of a fundraising effort for out-of-work Daisy Baker's employees.

My boy Jackson, when he'd by accident dripped a head or a dog or a tree or something that just materialized on the canvas as a recognizable object, used to immediately obliterate it.  Render it unrecognizable as an object.  Retain the abstractness in the abstract.  

This is called Lucifer ...  

Which is a pretty cool name for a painting.  Just try to find a whale in there.  Or, for that matter, anything else.

But when I was painting this particular Map of Troy and suddenly, out of the moby deep, there appeared a white whale ...  well I couldn't help but leave it the way it was.  This, after all, is Troy.  Home of Herman Melville.  Please don't make me tell you who he is.

Like Melville, I saw it as a signal from God.  Of course Melville thought everything was a signal from God, so maybe the comparison is less apt than it otherwise might be.  Also, I'm open to the notion that it was just an accident of art and a signal from nobody.  So you do the math.

Note on the photo:  These fucking things are impossible to photograph well, given that I'm a terrible photographer.  So the black smush at the 3 o'clock spot isn't nearly as visible in person as it is in the photo.  The light just got caught wrong.  

Note on the photo, part 2:  I used upper/lower case for the "You are here."  Which, in retrospect, I dislike.  Not sure why I did it, since I never have before.  Don't expect to see it again.