brush with time

painting is a freight train, cars covered in graffiti inside and out, palimpsest in vision

dating to the caves, and it all starts with a figure.

these paintings speak to that train. stylistically diverse and marrying image to other

style, they form a small part of an ongoing conversation i’m having with history. they

are intended to be open, in the nature of studies, not definitive, as any good

conversation can be.

every painter gets on the train carrying their own baggage, but when they get off they

leave it all behind, and i’m sitting on the caboose car floor, legs spread wide like a child,

rummaging through the stuff. putting it back in the wrong suitcase, mixing it all up.

i’ve been doing it intermittently for for over two decades, and it’s funny how different

luggage appeals and beckons at different times, how different marriages of masters

from faraway and the not too distant past get merged.. even portrait photography,

born of portrait painting (only not reserved for the elite), plays a a period piece role. cell

phones, well of course.

i realize that even though i profess to not being a figure painter anymore (after having

my work censored 15 years ago), what happened was that the figure in my work went

underground, became abstracted, and borrowed. initially only drawn in sketchbooks,

they have crept out into the open.

penny eisenberg 2017