Prosaic Realism

If you search Google for Prosaic Realism, this is the first item:

“Prosaic-realism” contends that love is not “sudden or certain,” but instead may be “ambivalent and confused.”

Rather than being apparent at first sight, it may develop gradually.

The prosaic realist interpretation also maintains that “there is no 'one true love."

Talk of Love: How Culture Matters

                              Not untrue, and for me the culmination of years of searching for words while I was painting them all along. My work over time and in aggregate, is based on painting things that I see, the way I see them. A simple premise, one that started by setting a few rules for myself:  I would always paint from life, I would always paint what I see when I see it, and I would be ruthlessly honest with myself.  I break these rules all the time, but mostly I adhere to them, while honing my skills and letting the process lead me. I would look at my day's work with the most critical eye I could muster, and promise myself I wouldn't make that mistake again.  

                               It was out of this process, the trial and error, and all the rules that went with it, that I started to think about the subjects I was painting.  Maybe the subject wasn't even the thing I was painting, but the shadow, or the light that made the shadow.  A row of telephone poles, integrated into a pastoral scene, could  become the subject, or the counter-subject.  I started to do random street scenes, malls, industrial sites, then gas stations and parking lots.  Many of these places can be seen from your car, as you go about doing something else; working, playing, shopping, et cetera. I see compositions of dark and light colors, the patterns and shapes. The scene is, essentially an excuse to apply paint to the canvas, and to use the material of paint to do the heavy lifting.  A deft brush stroke and a confident application of paint help describe place without undue attention. 

                              These scenes, so typical and commonplace, are easily overlooked and become landscapes of nowhere. Or they could be landscapes of anywhere with a complete lack of nostalgia and sentiment.  I'm lying to you, of course: as soon as I find something I want to paint and as I'm setting up and preparing to paint the scene, I'm also adoring it, and elevating it to a place that may just have some romance, some form of iconography, or something that is down right familiar.   Herein lies the tension.