“ The story is already written,  it just needs to be transformed into language “

- Julio Cortázar

I created this project in order to observe the act of painting by following a set of  instructions: Render 45 figurative paintings right above a redline across the canvas. The small paintings would all be on the same field as opposed to change canvases for each painting. I was looking to reduce the work to a figure-background relationship (literally) and the level of decision making close to zero.  I browsed magazines looking  to randomly-select figure-images. Then I  painted one at a time also in random order, as accurately as possible. I was to be "true" by copying the image to the best of my ability.  When I was finished, in order to look at the entire sixteen foot long canvas I had to step back so far out that the  line of images became a line of miniatures.  The work was more like a type of distance than it was a painting: the walkable  distance between the viewer and the miniature.  

Years later, when I finally had the wall space for it, I unrolled and stretched it to the wall and went back in looking to turn it into a painting. I knew I had to add “fiction” to make it become a painting, work in  elements following no structure or reason. I looked at Cy Twombly 1961 "Triumph of Galatea"and Rauschenberg of course. The line somehow exploded. I used the color combinations that were already there to activate the space. In terms of text, I included more images that I consciously chose to accentuate meaning. The original images I painted represent a selection that revealed for me the existence and particularities of a different consciousness.