I am visiting a wise and kind middle-aged female mentor. We are talking in her late-winter garden. She wears an amethyst shift, and her hair is beginning to gray. She says it’s too dreary to dig in the garden yet, although the sun is out. I agree, saying it’s too cold and wet. In my mind’s eye, I see waterlogged soil sticking heavily to the shovel. No, it’s not time yet…
We are standing next to a tall fence of unpainted cedar, which divides the yard and garden from the street side of the house. Weak winter sun is falling full on the fence, washing it with an orange light. It supports two kinds of vines intertwined. She asks me to be careful of the seeds of one of the vines, which have a gelatinous covering, like fish eggs, and are easily damaged. I notice that both vines have seeds like fish eggs in gooey clusters, and wonder vaguely why one is more important.
As I examine the fence, I see a slice of burl or a cross-section of a tree hanging there, and I know it was I who put it there some time ago. Its outline bears a curious resemblance to a teapot. I now see other objects that I have hung on the fence, and it appears I have painted on the fence as well. Gradually, it dawns on me that these elements form a large composition. The “teapot” sits on a big stump with semi-exposed roots, on a rise of land to the left of the composition. To the right is a deep view into broad, undulating hills. It doesn’t look like California, perhaps it is Italy?
Now, I am no longer in the garden, but standing on the sidewalk looking at the composition, which is now a mural on the broad, deeply textured white stucco wall of a house on the other side of the street. The composition is exceedingly strong & striking, yet utterly disjointed & fantastic. It reads as a coherent whole, yet completely shatters space/time. It is at once beautiful, powerful, and deeply unnerving. It is like a more upbeat & colorful, less spatially restricted DiChirico, which brings a similar sense of the monstrous infinite.
A rich and successful man in mid-life, very well-dressed in a dark, expensive suit, makes a remark about the impact of the mural. I reply that it succeeds powerfully, even though it is completely disjointed & wildly insane. I point to another, smaller mural on a garage to the left, which has a more traditionally unified perspective, but is painted with similar strength. This composition shows an arial view over a broad knoll, with a drop into a deep valley beyond. Both works depend for their success upon strong drawing & painting gestures. This is not digital work. The second piece may be by another artist. The man seems to know of me & my work, and says he owns one of my female nudes, and is in fact married to the model. I enjoy this feeling of recognition, and am trying to recall which painting and which woman it could be, but cannot. There is a feeling that, although I see this earlier work as incomplete & a failure, that it has garnered some esteem.