dovetail, for amy

oil on 16x20 panel

a face cradled in the hand is like a dove. often a mother wants a daughter to be everything that she is and everything that she is not. sometimes your mother wants nothing from you. it’s all complicated and it all depends. if you don’t follow your dreams, where do they go? sometimes they end up in your children, the same way that the most effective way to cleanse your blood of heavy metals is by having a baby. i mean it, the same way. this is not really a painting about me and my mother. this is just a painting of a mother and a daughter. a dove and its tail. and personally, it’s hard for me to say anything definitive about my own mother besides that i love her and in every way she wants me to dream on my own.

honey, can i have another?

oil on 6x9 paper

rooms are erotic and so are sunburns. it was summertime and i was too shy to talk to you then and i’m too shy to talk to you now, even after everything, the vulnerability (and believe me i’d like to, but what would I say?) but it just takes twenty seconds of bravery to be propelled forward in life between long intervals of cowardice and shrinking. so you got to know me in one of those 20-second-moments of my life, which is the best and maybe only way to get to know me. when i am the realest my teeth are out, and i’m jittery as fuck. when you say things you don’t mean, your carelessness reveals you, i learned. not “you” in the direct sense, “you” in the general sense. often we act like nobody is watching and often that is the case: nobody is. intermittently i remember that i’m not being paid any mind and i am free. but sometimes, someone does, someone notices - eyes, you said, that there is something, that’s hot, you said.