"They are my daughters. I guess it's time I let them out to date." Danny once told me as he selected a few of his pieces for me to show to friends. I laughed of course, but I have to admit a similar feeling. These paintings are like living things, like entities. They take on a power, a personality, based on how the elements of their being have come together to create the various bodies of paint that become a single entity.
Each painting presents something unique. And yet they often seem to come from a family, a group, a little community of similar works that have in common some period of time or condition of color or form or line. These families might extend over long wavelengths of creation or small windows of emergence.
Certain stylistic distinctions have occurred only once, only showing up as one chapter in the long tale of the entirety of the work.
Others seem to march on still – consistent manifestations of creation that twist and turn and re-occur through vast stretches of work.
And in some ways they all vie for attention. They all seem to want to be seen. Like a living room thick with grandchildren each is simultaneously individual and interrelated.
And because they have within them certain traits, they feel to me like they all possess personality.
Which means there are as many ways to judge and relate and interact as there are between people.
It's fascinating to watch as someone relates to the work, finding a compatible partner based on inherent qualities that are instant attractors in unpredictable ways.
I'll have no doubt that a certain piece is one of the best, but another person will move right past it and start chatting up another piece I've hardly had a chance to know.
These entities essentially take on life as they come to mean something special to certain people in deeply personal ways.
They become living things, little beings of prayer and paint.
