Essence

Today I brought the first load of stuff over to the new apartment. Ceramics, glass and this stack of good paper, things that I worried might get crushed in the U-haul. I thought about all the promises one makes when they move into a new place. Like, "I will wash and chop veggies and put them in little storage containers as soon as I get home from the grocery store, instead of leaving them to die, forgotten, in their plastic bags". And, "I will write things down in a day planner instead of on index cards that end up scattered throughout the house" And of course, "I will dust more".

I received a delightful email from my friend Ilira who said that, in these "Moving" paintings of late, I'm really capturing the essence of the object. I loved that. Essence. It was the perfect way to put it. I had wondered why I'd been finding a perfectly fine drawing boring, needing to push it by letting its colors seep together and drip where they would. While I was capturing the shape of the object in the perfectly fine drawing, I wasn't content until I'd captured its essence.