"The Allusion of Being Embedded, Direct Northern View"

Semi Abstract Experience

This painting is a result of two consequences in my life. One, I had a job way back when, and the boss I had used the word embedded one day in relation to me and my job security, but in a negative way. I remember being at my home studio that night and drawing the word embedded.

The word embedded is written across the upper middle part of this entire canvas. Also, my old wife Heather had a near-death anaphylactic experience soon after that and had been in the hospital. I gathered up all the biohazard stuff like item wrappers and trash generated from her experience.

I got home, I took that trash and I used it to stencil some random shapes on this canvas. You can still see the spray paint in many parts. Her experience, in particular, created about five canvases, this is one of them. The painting itself turned out wonderful, and I love the color combinations. You wouldn't be able to tell the word embedded is written in there, and that was the whole idea.

I remember seeing a video of Picasso starting a painting with numbers. He was being interviewed by somebody and he was explaining how easy it was to start a painting and so he started drawing a few numbers on a canvas and then he began to form a painting from the shapes of those numbers. I saw this a long time ago and I've used the idea many times when I don't feel so inspired.

Fair warning, this is a very large piece and will dominate any room it is hung in. I painted it on a 12-foot easel I had built in my first “real” home studio. I say “real” because up until then I had lived in such small spaces that whatever apartment or home I lived in was so small that it was in itself just a studio. The idea of having a studio specifically for painting was foreign to me, I just painted, wherever I was it was natural.

I'm not sure what the bottom left, and bottom right elongated shapes mean. They've appeared in a couple other paintings of mine. The best I can relate them to is some sort of medical meaning, that's only because they look like maybe some cells, microscopic life forms, or some sort of encapsulated pills. It's a beautiful oil painting but very hard to photograph because of its size.