Where the Smoke Blows Back

"Where the Smoke Blows Back" - acrylic on plywood (baltic birch, uncradled)  18" x 11" x .5".  Ready to hang (back has been pre-wired for hanging).  Available here and at Artfinder.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.​
 - Shel Silverstein, Where The Sidewalk Ends


I've never been a slow walker.  I like a pace that is purposeful and brisk.  Slow and measured?  Not  in my wheelhouse.   But you know that pesky universe...it makes me  do the things I wouldn't normally do to get to places where I might not otherwise arrive.

When the smoke blows back, it is instinctive to hurry scurry outta there.  But in my hurry, I miss the smoke signals, so to speak.  The lessons in the blow back.  And so I am trying to slow my roll.

Where the Smoke Blows Back

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About the art:  This piece began as the thing you are NEVER supposed to do as a painter - use the leftover paint on your palette to begin a new piece, without purpose or planning.  And, in general, whenever I try that a big coat of gesso goes over the entire thing and I begin again.  In this rare instance, however, there was an interesting composition in the hastily splatted paint.  And thus I landed in a dystopian forest landscape with a fiery backdrop to charred trees.  Acrylic paint thickly applied with rubber wedge, paintbrush, fingers and chopstick.