Tonight, this four-by-four-foot bison is stomping his way onto the ROUGH DRAFTS page, though I should clarify immediately that he’s there on forged papers. I didn’t abandon him in a fit of dramatic studio despair. There was no theatrical rage-quit, no hurling of turpentine, and no turning him toward the drywall for three months while I pretended we’d never met.

I finished it.

He was one of the first gargantuan canvases I ever tackled. He came from that early period when every giant blank canvas looked less like a threat and more like a dare I hadn’t developed the good sense to decline.

There is zero evidence anywhere on this canvas that I ever paused to consult a color wheel or ask if a hue was “appropriate.” Turquoise violently collides with searing orange. Crimson bleeds into slabs of black thick as wet asphalt. These aren't delicate strokes; they look like they were thrown by someone in a bar fight against hesitation itself.

And I love that about him.
And I miss that about me.

I miss getting weird in the studio without treating every single stroke like a delicate hostage negotiation. I miss being technically less competent and somehow much less concerned about proving I am competent.

The problem with getting better at art, whatever that might mean, is that eventually craft hires middle management. Every brushstroke has to file a report. Every strange color gets called into a meeting. Everything becomes so precious.

This painting preceded all that though.
It comes from before the office opened.

Anyway, this enormous old love of mine is going into the Rough Drafts tonight. I hope he doesn’t spend too long down there among the digital cobwebs and abandoned checkout carts. He’s lived with me long enough. I’d like to see him go stand four feet wide in somebody else’s house, taking up an unreasonable amount of wall and reminding everyone who walks past that sometimes the best thing you can do is make the mark before your better judgment arrives.

Thank you for looking, friends.

“The Wild One”
48x48
Acrylic and Oil on Canvas