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