Einstein liked to repeat "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
And so began this series of 108 paintings made during lockdown in New York City. Alone in the shared experience of self-imposed confinement began a vipassana of sorts. Seated in the window day after day, painting mostly at dusk and dawn, the moment when one can pass from one word to the next.
Meditations on staring at the same thing. When you look at an object without end, it ceases to exist and disintegrates into a morphing mass of energy. It blurs, expands, contracts, swirls. Dissolves, reassembles, dissolves, becomes something else. The longer you look, the less you know what is in front of you.
Actually I’ve had the same experience trying to spell a familiar but temporarily forgotten word. Or most dreams when I wake.
A building becomes a door, a door becomes a gateway, a vessel, a womb, my body, my home, my imagination, primeval soup, ether, nothing.
The passing of time, the black of night, the glow of dawn, searing bright sunlight, stormy skies, fleeting dusk and then dark again. No day will ever be repeated, no painting painted twice.