I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to write about that canvas. I even started writing about it last night. I’ll try to be brief.

In the middle of the 80′s, I bought my first 3-pack of Frederick brand pre-stetched canvases for my first painting class. My drawing instructor had suggested I take painting, which he taught. So I did. My drawings didn’t cross over to paintings as well as I’d liked, so I had to resort to being totally creative with paint, without knowing what I was doing. Now I liked my first painting, but it was generally panned as being the ugliest thing anyone had ever seen. I couldn’t destroy it, because it was a work from the beginning of my art career, and one day it might be important. You know, when I became a well-known and much sought after wealthy artist. I had to keep it for historical reasons, you see, so future art history students could fall asleep watching slide-shows of my early works and be forced to remember the name, date of creation, and current location of that body of work.

Unnamed … 1984 … Orb’s closet.

It was, in fact, completely hideous. A series of, well, orbs from small to large overlapping slightly beginning with a small red and ending with a somewhat earth-like looking planet. On a black splotchy background, of course. Seriously. Ugly. Wouldn’t even hang it on my own wall. It was supposed to represent the birth of our planet, but it did it poorly. Very poorly. Yuck. Still, I carried it around every time I moved and continued to take great care with it.

Until I needed a canvas to paint on and had no money. One stressful night when I felt I had to paint or burst, I started painting over it. Can’t even remember the first few incarnations, because the result was as hideous as the previous incarnation, and that canvas became my laboratory. If I wanted to try something new, I’d do it on that one first. There are many, many layers. I always hoped one would turn out great and the thing could be declared art, but I held out little hope.

I could go on and on about the many layers, as I do remember most of them, but I am going to spare you, at least for now. Much like writing, I paint to get things off my chest. I really don’t feel like wading through things I covered over and moved on about, and I won’t be able to shut up once I start describing the various layers of “art” and emo on that one piece of canvas.

End result is that this canvas has been with me since 1984, and has always been in my home somewhere safe, and I’ve basically been working on it the whole time. But, now … it’s done (I think – don’t ask, I might be adding something yet). I’ll probably flesh this post out with more posts in the future, because I really want to tell you some of the story about painting class (and egotistical young artists) and a few of the layers on that canvas should be pointed out (most noteably the newest ones added this year, which are a hodge-podge of some recent failed works), but I’m tired and don’t feel much like talking about it tonight.

In other words, I’d really like to be sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor melting crayons with my iron and blowdryer. I think it needs more melted crayon. Doesn’t everything?