5

When people ask, I say that my artwork is a spell. I make street art when I feel that the object of that spell should be directed at society. I make abstract art when I feel that the spell is a feeling that I am trying to release from my mind. In the recent months I have become a decent enough artist to start capturing bigger and more industrious targets but it’s always the same; it’s always a spell. I like to imagine myself as some sort of post-modern wizard that generates images and sculpture that can open they hearts and minds of others. I say this, but my work doesn’t have nearly that much efficacy. I am just a human so my spells can only be human-spells.  

            My friend Brian came home from Afghanistan with shrapnel in three parts of his body. After surgery and a downed helicopter, he was back together no worse for the wear. Upon the completion of his service he bought a blue painting of a eucalyptus tree that I was working on when he came home for the scripted visiting of friends and family as he repeatedly retold his experience. He came by and acquired the painting in the rain, sitting in an SUV filled with his belongings he shoved everything aside to personally hold the piece for the long ride to the high desert. It hangs above his bed, as a childish blue monument that seems to be decomposing in thick blue drops. He once confided in me: “I saw a lotta’ shit overseas, I’ve got some Demons inside of me after all that, but when I look at this... I don’t know… it, it.. just makes me feel like everything is gonna to be okay.” I like to imagine that the painting itself magically and methodically pulled the shrapnel from his body and sutured his wounds and eased him into a deep sleep where he had no memory of what happened in that country on the far side of the world. I know this is a lie, it was military surgeons that pulled the shards from his body. It was time that closed his open wounds, it was time that expired and brought him home.

I like to imagine Brian standing in front of that painting as it eats up every unhappy memory of his life like some psychological sponge. I hope it uproots any demon and fills his room with happy dreams.

 I imagine what a Eucalyptus is; as it sheds its skin from each previous year to grow a little taller and a little stronger. The scars of every previous season fall to the earth in elegant fissured ribbons leaving no memory that they even took place.