No Idea: 1962

[johncomic]

My 58^th acrylic is sorta my 55^th because I did the underdrawing for it back in January, then left it untouched til now. An attempt to let Expressionism [and maybe Fauvism] inform my approach a bit more than usual.

When I was about five, we were visiting my uncle in the winter. In the early dark before dinner, some cousins dragged me out to play hockey on the front walk. I was goalie — not at all a good one.

At one point, a cousin flipped the puck toward me, far over my head... and put it through the window of the front door. I can still remember how the sound of the shattering glass horrified me. It wasn't the first time I'd ever heard glass break, but something about it this time curdled my insides. Of course I feared The Wrath of the Adults®, yet somehow what was worse for me was the irrevocable destruction. The idea of something that couldn't be fixed or undone just seemed unspeakably terrible to little me. I wept inconsolably, and it felt like ages before my mother could finally calm me down.

To this day, I feel some uneasiness any time I have to make a decision or take a course of action that can't be undone.... and destroying anything still feels, on some level, wrong.