A note relating to these paintings...

September 29, 2008.
Oakland, 1:01 am.
A note from May 18, 2008 that was not transcribed until now…

Think: Where will the work reside? Never mind the basement; of course it will be in my basement or your basement or the museums' basements or the dump. But, aside from those detours, where did you make the work to be? And that leads to who did you make the work for?

Well, we all know we work for the highest, and the highest is the museum and the art magazine. An editor told me once "An art magazine is journalism, and we put on the front the jazziest photo we received last month." (Hardly the place to find a still, small voice). The museum, a museum director told me once, is a place "To collect the finest and to educate the public to its value." And as for what is the finest, that's a professional judgment formed by conversations in the profession... hardly the place to hear a solitary, still, small voice.

So, what size should your work be? Big enough to be seen by the masses of people in museums for education, jazzy enough for journalism to place on the cover where the museum professionals will see it.

But what of the solitary still, small voice—the sound we each hear when the noise of the world stops—where should that work reside?

What to do with and how to make that work not addressed to the professional world but rather to the solitaries in the midst of their thoughts. Not loud like a magazine cover but quiet like a dark, silent despair, not large like a space for educating a museum public, but small like the inner place of forever grief for a lost loved one—or for your self.