New painting: Fear

Fear

This painting is called Fear. There's a farmer man on the right taking the hand of a woman with two kids around her waist and a baby on her knee. 

TV is amazing. 

I'm halfway around the world but get most American cable channels. I was watching a show on TLC about a boy in India inflicted with a horrible physical disease. He had tumors all over his face and a giant one from his neck he had to carry in his arms. They said he wouldn't make it out of his teens. Makes you wonder what you have to worry or complain about or be afraid of. It's all extra, isn't it? Whatever I do with day to day. It's all just a big fat bonus, isn't it? I've already won the human lottery. And one day it'll be over. So what's there to be afraid of? But it never sticks, does it? The perspective never sticks. I fall back into habits and routines, and there goes fear creeping back in.

We got free HBO for a while, part of some kind of promo. I watched Behind the Candlelabra. Beautiful movie. Watching a movie like that that was done so well was actually painful. I was jealous it was so beautiful. I've never made anything like that. I feel like I'm not anywhere close. I would like to contribute something like that, something creatively, but I haven't. It's practically impossible it seems. But I still believe that it's the way for me to at least push and try, to write and paint and make things. It's what I enjoy and love to spend my time doing. So that's the important thing, isn't it? But there's always the fear that it's for nothing and that I'm wasting my time. But I enjoy it, so that's not a waste of time.

I know whatever you feel someone's felt it before. That's why I love art and books and music. I like to see the things I feel written or expressed in some way, by someone other than me. It makes me feel close to that person, to people in general. I know whatever I feel someone's felt before, but I have to be reminded, and art is the reminder. I see hundreds of faces and bodies every day and they see me. We don't interact. I only imagine what their lives are like, what these people are into, what their fears are, what they've learned, if they know something, if, like the boy in India, their perspective can help me. I think that if more people made things we'd feel more connected and be less inclined to think other people are not us. Most people are closed off it seems, won’t let themselves feel what they really feel, deny it, push it away, bury it. They think it's dark or weird or crazy. But it's not crazy. Everyone everywhere has it hard and everyone wants to be ok. Everything is just an egg for something else. Everything is just a step forward. Fear, love, anger, Duck Dynasty, Honey Boo Boo, Kim, Kanye, they're all just eggs. That's how I see it. Something on the way to something else.