Works on Time Part 1.

When I was about 10 years old, maybe younger, I started to become obsessed with Time. I remember one particular moment in which I sat in my family's TV room at our 1970's acrylic bar, with a 'las vegas' ash try in which pretzel sticks sat as I liked to pretend to smoke using these - little did I know then, that this would be a common scene in my early 20's and mid 30's - I sat at the bar with paper and pen figuring out the time changes from winter to spring... and i remember the feeling of depression and anxiety that overwhelmed me. I always thought of time from that moment on. Imagining it in sections and divided into shelves like a library. I began cataloging my life in this way, years or eras packaged in a scrap book and shelved for later memory access. Later in life, in my 20's I began to have great panic and anxiety with time. Either it stretched out too long and my impatience got the better of me, or time melted away so fast I never had a chance to complete the work I wanted to finish, in those days I viewed time as an enemy, and I only accepted the basic understanding of how we are taught to accept.... let's get back to this thought train later.

For the last month or so, I have wanted to bring this small obsession I have with time into my painting. I suppose, if you analyze the entirety of my body of work, you would find traces of this dialogue etched throughout it, however, thinking of the great early cubist work by Marcel Duchamp, " Nude Descending A Staircase", a long with a variety of other cubists that depicted time in this fractal motion - I want to take on this challenge to bring my own thoughts and understanding as well as my own style of painting to this.

Clearly working out how to render sketches to begin was / is challenging, and I am really only in it's beginning phase for this series of work. I began two works this past week, my first attempts to tackle this concept.

I am enjoying the fluidness that has developed so far in the works. Almost as if time melted. The ideas in each are of the abstract concept that time is merely a human construct of perception. That we exist at the same moment in the past, future and the present is the only true time. I hope these works flesh out further. Too many times have I attempted an idea in painting and eventually scrap it because it doesn't not work out how I envision.

With these works, I am trying to take it slow. adding only a few brushstrokes and elements a day. Taking the time to allow them to mature.

Feel free to comment or message and let me know your thoughts on the work so far, I'd love the input!

~m

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