What you get. Oil on paper. 21” x 31.5” Oil study towards new NOR painting. More studies to come. This is what I did in my studio yesterday. It’s quite nice to work small fast and loose...so to speak.

Link to painting progression

Prayer by Jorie Graham

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl?
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
                            infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison and unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water’s downdrafts and upswirls, the?
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
            motion that forces change––?
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets ?
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing?
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by each glistening minute, through
which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
In the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen ?
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only?
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

this is the second study I’m working on, oil on canvas