I’m beginning to think that what it is is I don’t consider painting as primarily what many artists consider painting — thinking now of my fellow exhibitors at Slater Museum as the current examples. 

Painting for me is something else starting inward. It doesn’t even happen unless I decide to proceed with something that’s already begun mentally/emotionally/psychologically. 

I don’t think about finished pieces as being adornments to homes, adjuncts to decor and so forth. It just doesn’t occur to me. I’ve never used other people’s paintings in that way. 

I saw it happen a fair amount growing up, but, surprisingly perhaps, it never stuck with me as a way to think about art. All the decor I saw growing up was working-class dreck consisting mostly of framed prints from Sears-Roebuck. It’s not that I had a sophisticated palate as a 9-year-old, or whatever age. It’s that this dreck never connected with me.

Consequently I can’t consider my paintings to be decor because I don’t think about decor even the tiniest bit. And I never have. It’s completely uninteresting to me. 

My a priori assumptions about what painting is are different from those of many painters, perhaps than most painters. 

Decor is a municipal space greatly familiar to regular people, as well as to many artists who at root are regular people. Artists and non-artist decor consumers share that space. I couldn’t find that space if my life depended on it.

No one will ever want my paintings, because they don’t take place in this shared space. They take place in an esoteric space arising from concerns and interests compiled within me from my earliest days, that resist conformity with other spaces. 

My space is as invisible and impossible to locate for the vast majority of regular people as the space of decor is for me.

Regarding my ongoing thoughts on consequence in art, I have, intentionally or otherwise, rightly or wrongly, come to regard the invisibility of my work to most regular people as a factor of consequence.