Overheard Painting

Do No Harm. This tenet works in all circumstances. It's really all we need. I hope one day mankind will stop eating and mistreating the rest of the animal kingdom. It's the person not the parts. Being gay is a gift, a variation on a theme. Love is too powerful to be shaped or confined. I promise to die someday so these paintings will be more valuable. Homo sapiens probably needs to stop replicating for awhile. Our numbers have grown too many. We think we're smart and we understand our existence. I'm not so sure. More likely, we're just high-end monkeys. I give myself over to That Which Governs. I hope Someone or Something is looking after us, keeping vigil. "Thank you," to everyone who owns and all future owners of these paintings. You are magical, wonderful people. If you're ever in Los Angeles, feel free to look me up. I'd like to meet you. I'll buy you some lunch. Every canvas has an agenda--a life of its own separate from its maker, separate from thought or logic or reason--and to plot its course is only to interfere. To plan is to destroy. Trust the mess. All marks are good. Oh, but the mutiny of scrutiny . . . if we could only just leave it alone. The self-taught artist has a great chance to be unique. Without knowledge of 'rules' to hinder the hand or an instructor's style to imitate, what results is pure, entirely his or her own. Contrary to popular belief, abstract art is 'meaningful' on a parallel with representational art. Each of us sees differently, and individual responses to an abstract work of art are varied. An abstract work's 'meaning' is oftentimes stronger and more personal for the viewer than it is in purely representational art where the subject matter is obvious and can only evoke a limited range of emotions. So far, nowhere else in this existence have I found the freedom and exhilaration that painting affords. Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Welcome words to a daydreamer like me. "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." - Francis Bacon At the moment, I'm loving the paintings of Cecily Brown, Dana Schutz, Odd Nerdrum, Raimonds Staprans and Paul Balmer. My all-time favorites are Max Beckmann, Milton Avery, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Joan Mitchell, Egon Schiele, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler and Lucien Freud. Scott Andrew Spencer (American, born 1970) is primarily an abstract painter.