So allow me to introduce you to Señor Hamhead. He came to me on a trip to the far side of Haleakala on Maui. Tramping through the dense forest I came on a thick plantation of this fruit planted by the native first-people who brought the trees with them in their out rigger canoes—the Mountain Apple. The fruit is thin-skinned and perfumy a bit watery, but like the banana or pear only tastes like itself. Refreshing comes to mind. This plant had originated in Malaysia.

I painted this at a time of great ambition. I showed it to a dealer who suggested I enter psycho-therapy. It carries a great failure and caused me to lose my nerve for a time. Sure was fun to paint, though. The painting suffered damage from the barn-rats nesting on the stretcher bars. I was working through some “issues,” like—are you MAN enough? and How much is self-worth attached to money? Have I come to resolution? Jury’s out.

I’m showing you this not because I now “like” it. (Still don’t) It had languished in our barn until some repair work unearthed the poor thing. It does carry two ideas of interest: 1) it taught me a thing or two about the value of doing the “next thing” as a studio tactic, acting on impulse can open a pathway to the collective unconscious. and 2) taught the truth of pictures living inside of other pictures.  These two ideas have formed the basis of what I like to do as an art practitioner….in this picture I’m trying to come to terms with the idea of pleasure taken from us by the Judeo/Christian false idea of morality. Garden of Eden and all that…

I’ve been at this picture in picture forever. This is an old idea, in fact ancient, ancient as the cave walls of stone-age Europe. And ole Uncle Vermeer was a great practitioner of PIP.

I love looking at things, things as thoughts, things as things. Things as thoughts?? That’s called philosophy, right?

To find true things inside and out, I made this “Hamhead” picture, my mind was tumescent with longing for all things. Sure, sex-ever-present, but mostly I was looking for true things, a pleasure in the hunt as well as in the finding. Pleasure. The mind as a sex organ, and look!, that fruit is so luscious. Its dying to be eaten in a fulfillment of genetic destiny.

Pages from the Talmud informed my thinking, here is text and commentary on the Law. Word pictures inside word pictures.

King Carlos wants to remind us that the world is complex in it’s figure/ground relationships. We carry in us feelings, thoughts, emotions as we move through the world of visual sensation.

So complexity lives within us all. This little orange guy found its way as a shock to my pretense of making “great” art. He’s saying, “Just get on with it, buster, the world is more magical with a little good humor”…  all the while informed by the view out my studio window.

Finally, with a nod to that ambitious self, wanting to say something about the Christian matrix we find ourselves swimming in…