Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 x 1.5in

Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 x 1.5in

Acrylic ink and watercolor on two sheets of paper, approx. 24 x 36in

Acrylic, gesso, ink and watercolor on stretched canvas, 36 x 48 x 1 1/2in

I’ve always thought that Art and Sports are very similar pursuits. To wit: Biologically speaking, neither are necessary. Food, water and shelter are the stuff of survival. Art and Sport are sort of frivolous when it comes right down to basic straight survival. But we aren’t base creatures, are we? We are dreamers. And Sport and Art are the realms of dreams, transcending the self and the moment, sweet little eternities in split seconds.

“I was taught a month ago

to bide my time and take it slow

then I learned just yesterday

to rush and never waste the day.”

This afternoon I spent several hours shooting hoops on an outdoor court here in the Heights section of Jersey City, Manhattan all glorious over there in the distance on the other side of the Hudson River. A couple of games of 21 with a couple of sixteen year old kids, a quick game of two-on-two, but mostly just shooting hoops by myself. Shooting and thinking. And dreaming. And this stuff of dreams has figured into my studio time the past year-and-a-half, too, drawings and drawing-paintings of lone characters on asphalt courts, often somewhere in-between night and day, chain link fences and built-in benches, pigeons from New York City and a prairie dog or two from good old North Dakota, paper airplanes and children’s games of marbles and paper to-go coffee cups with plastic lids spilling out of metal mesh playground NYC garbage cans––a cacophony of action!––but never a sign of the hoop itself, the goal. Because the goal, I suppose, isn’t to score. The goal in these paintings and drawings is to REALLY LIVE.

“I’m convinced the whole day long

that all I learn is alway wrong

and things are true that I forget

but no one taught that to me yet.”

(July 25th 2021)

Acrylic, gesso, ink and watercolor on stretched canvas, 24 x 36 x 1 1/2in

“DO YOU HAVE ANY REGRETS?”

A couple of weeks ago I made a virtual class visit with art students at a college in upstate New York. For as many of these virtual classroom interactions as I’ve had by now over the past 12 months I just can’t seem to shake the whole NASA feel of this mode of communication. I also can never quite figure out if I’m supposed to be the one in Houston at Mission Control, or stowed away in a land rover on the surface of Mars.

At the end of my hour-long presentation I took a few questions from students in their dorm rooms or parents’ basements. But rather than the usual kinds of questions––How do you promote your work? or Which do you prefer: Pthalo or Prussian blue?––a young woman asked: “Do you have any regrets?” Whoa. It was a good enough question to have stuck around after the virtual get-together ended.

I’m not sure if it’s luck or simply genetic disposition but I struggle to find anything in my Art Life or my Life Life that I’d categorize as a “regret” (my only regret in this life is that it goes by so fast but there’s some comfort in knowing I’m hardly alone in this acknowledgment). We all have lots of things that we’d like to improve upon or do better at, but that seems to me something different than “regret.” I don’t love everything I draw or paint. Who does? But I deeply love Drawing and Painting. And perhaps that’s the point. (March 11th 2021)

Acrylic, gesso, ink and watercolor on stretched canvas, 24 x 36 x 1 1/2in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Between the 7th and 8th grades I grew seven inches. It’s what medical experts refer to as a Growth Spurt. It was an awkward experience.

A kid in our neighborhood was a serious Basketball Junkie. Given my recent enlargement (to about 6’4”), he said I should start playing the game, in part, he said, because “you can’t teach height.”

My first organized basketball practice at Simle Junior High School in the 8th grade was one of the most confusing experiences of my young life. I felt like I’d been dropped off in downtown Mumbai and I only spoke Swedish. The kid in our neighborhood may have been right, you can’t teach height. But it turned out you couldn’t teach (me, at least) the Three Man Weave, either.

By my Junior year at Century High I was only slightly more comfortable on a basketball court. I was on the second of two B squads that year, mostly warming the bench, but something had slowly happened: I’d fallen genuinely in love with the Game. The summer between my Junior and Senior years I played A LOT OF BASKETBALL. At least two hours of pick-up games during lunch hour(s) at the Y on Washington Street and then roaming various courts around town in the evening after my forty-hour-a-week summer job at Superior Silk Screen. And often late at night – ten or eleven o’clock – shooting free throws on the chain-netted hoops at Robert P. Miller Elementary down the street from our house – clink, clink, clink – over and over and over again.

October of my Senior year, after the three-day open tryouts for the varsity team (of which I’d missed the first day because I thought I was sick but in hindsight was simply nervous), I’d earned a starting forward position on the team. And that experience was profound for me, way beyond the game of basketball. It demonstrated for me that in the end, “making it” at anything is simply the by-product of completely and utterly dedicating yourself to the thing itself. When you do that, it seemed to me, you really can’t lose. (January 3rd 2021)

Acrylic ink and watercolor on paper, approx. 30 x 40in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

During my Fever Dream Basketball Summer, between my junior and senior years of high school, after my full-time day job at the screen print shop and two hour lunchtime scrimmage at the Y and then maybe some 3-on-3 somewhere around town before the sun went down, I often found myself down the street from our house at Robert P. Miller Elementary, on the dark asphalt courts out back next to a field that sloped down into a ravine. The only light was a street lamp on the other side of a parking lot so the two full courts were mostly shadows. The nets on the four hoops were aluminum. Swishes sounded like the word “Thanks” spoken softly, clearly annunciated.

Occasionally that summer, on my restless free throw nights, a middle-aged guy wearing goggle-glasses was there before I arrived, hogging the good court. He’d run full-court games against himself, re-enacting epic Lakers/Celtics grudge-matches from the ‘80’s. I knew this because he’d call the games out loud as he played – under his breath – as he breathlessly hustled and shuffled back-and-forth, up and down the court. “BIRD FINDS D.J. FOR A CORNER THREE...KAREEM SNAGS THE REBOUND AND FORWARDS THE BALL TO MICHAEL COOPER...MAGIC AT THE TOP OF THE KEY – FAKES A PASS TO RAMBIS – BEHIND THE BACK TO WORTHY FOR THE STUFF!!” The guy lays the ball in (he’s clearly never dunked a basketball). “THE CROWD’S ON ITS FEET AT THE FORUM IN L.A.!!!” He says this last part in almost a whisper, pumping his fist as he dribbles back down the court in the other direction, pumping his fist in the air, waiting to see what Ainge and Larry and Parish and McHale will do to respond.

Privately, I begin referring to this guy as the Professor of Impossibilities.

The after-hours noise awakened the small colony of prairie dogs that took over the ground beneath the playground’s swing set each summer which was probably just as well since only a single swing hung from the set, like a midnight gallows.

And I doubted that he even knew I was there those summer nights, shooting free throws on the B court. “Thanks.” “Thanks.” “Thanks.” (January 30th 2021)

Acrylic ink and watercolor on paper, approx. 30 x 40in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Acrylic ink and watercolor on paper, approx. 30 x 40in

“Pistol” Pete Maravich was a particular inspiration when I was young, learning the game of basketball (which like all things worth dedicating serious time to can never really be learned). And not so much for his showmanship when the bright lights were on, but more for his legendary practice habits, when nobody was looking.

To be sure, Pistol Pete was hardly the first basketball player to dedicate himself to the Art of Practice, Pistol just seemed to be a bit more maniacal about it. I read stories about him sleeping with a basketball, or dribbling it while hanging out of a moving car’s window. The time spent working on various parts of his game seemed to have metastasized beyond mere “practice” to something almost monastically religious, an Order of the Court.

A lot of our everyday lives is tedious – laundry, going to the same old grocery store over and over again, lifting things up and putting things down, folding things, unfolding things. Perhaps an essential definition of Art is: Doing something boring with style. A tree is just a tree, but have you seen what field days Vincent Willem van Gogh had with trees?!

Pistol Pete Maravich was an artist. He saw the rules and objectives of the game of basketball as opportunities to dance, to REALLY live, to PLAY. There’s a shot clock on this life, folks. Put some panache on your lay-ups. (January 4th 2021)

Acrylic ink and watercolor on paper, approx. 30 x 40in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Acrylic ink and watercolor on paper, approx. 30 x 40in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Acrylic ink and watercolor on paper, approx. 30 x 40in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in

Ink and watercolor on paper, 7 1/2 x 11in