Painting History circa 2001

If the first element of History is Time, the second element, in my mind, is Text. Because, we could say, history is the textualizing of events that happened in time. But it's not any time we can portray, it should be time past. That's where memory becomes important, and the best figure to elucidate memory is the phonograph or the camera, or better yet, TEXT itself. Markings on a text form their very own history. A text is a history. I can feel myself getting closer and closer to my goal. I've already made a painting of a clock. I've made collages of text, a special one with clippings from an old Radio magazine, yellowed images of electrical diagrams. My goal is to paint a pure abstraction that is the concept of history, but I'm a long way from there. Nevertheless, an obsession is an obsession and I will keep trying until I'm content with myself.


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