You say tomato I say tomato.

You talk about how painting in the past has been a splurge, an idealised outpouring of emotion for you. And it is absolutely true that in order to create more constructive, more successful work you have to temper these emotions, its cruelly ironic that one of the reasons you love painting so much, turns out to be one of the greatest hinderances to becoming anything like your idols in the artworld, i think all artists must go through the same contextual quandry at one point or another.

As you know tom, i probably started to talk about that same principle about 18months ago, the need to objectfy the subjective moment. However, i am coming to understand more and more that life isn't a journey towards a destination, its a fluid series of here and nows with constantly changing goals. It seems to be a principle i struggle with, constantly reciting the mantra "i exist and learn today in order to live tomorrow". But with an attitude like this, when do i suppose that this imagined future day will come, if i'm not careful the whole of my life will be spent preparing for some unreachable goal. I guess what i'm trying to talk about is that at the moment i'm realising, or perhaps worried that my own work has gone too far in the opposing direction. Much like i have tempered my emotions in everyday life, my painting has also become too unfeeling, whereas i was trying to objectify in order to be able to convey accurately those small humanist moments of frailty, vulnerability etc etc, what i have actually done is close off my eye from those moments. I think its very easy to do, our mind seems to find anyway possible to keep us from those tiny emotional truths, to find an easy way out, probably because those emotions are so raw and so real that it takes the bravest of people to search in the abyss for them. And thats why a lot of those souls are lost to us, they never find their way out. Nietszche was right when he said "whomsoever searches for monsters, beware, lest he become one, for when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you". I just don't know whether i've got that strength, or foolhardyness in me, but ultimately we probably won't have to make that choice anyway, these things have a habit of finding you or passing you by whether you want them to or not.

So you see, the long and short of it is that, the goal posts have shifted once again back to the other end, undoubtedly before too long they will need to be moved again, the image we seek is a mirage and its perfection doesn't exist. all we can do is keep searching for it.