Sometimes I feel as if no one pays a bit of heed to what I’m accomplishing, out here, at the edge of the frontier, even though I’m embarking upon what may be one of the most exciting series of American paintings ever executed.  It’s so hard being me.

I could spell it all out for you.  You will get it.  I’ve already done it, through a tool known as expository prose.  I will post this prose shortly.

I feel phenomenally electrified to feel two cities, Madrid and Philadelphia, to be the crucibles from which my painterly nascence arises.

Philadelphia’s identity must be keyed upon Eakins. Within Madrid’s, Goya remains supreme, for he remains the fountain from which all ensuing painting issues.

I have been likened to the Pennsylvania Impressionists. In sooth, it is true, but I am not one of them.  I see form and space, whereas impressionists see light through fleeting dabs of color.  Perhaps I am too Baroque, too “old school” to consider myself an impressionist. I wonder.  Am I just a romantic?

I think not. Optical clarity, the residue upon the retina, remains supreme.  But then, wherein lies Goya, within this field of flowing vision?  Eakins is the link.

Carolus Duran, mentor to John Singer Sargent, chanted to his students the mantra: “Velazquez, Velazquez, Velazquez……”   Murmur it continuously.  Velazquez represents the pinnacle of the essence of painting, the supreme deity of optical clarity.  On the day I accidentally drank paint thinner as I painted Madrid’s cathedral, La Almudena, I did something else as well: I SAW Velazquez! The sensation is unbelievable! Picture your eyes as two onions.  Imagine the sensation of peeling the skin off of an onion and transfer that sensation to your eyes.  SEEING Velazquez is like peeling the skin off your eyes!

If you live in the United States, however, you have a problem in that you CAN’T see Velazquez.  It’s a huge problem, too.  You have to be in Madrid, standing in front of “Las Meninas,” or in front of “The Weavers” in order to see Velazquez.  Only two painters, to my knowledge, have caught the sensation of light Velazquez provides:  Sargent in his copy of La Infanta Marguerita provides a cartoon of this light, as does Salvador Dali in his “Distinguished Person Pinning a Butterfly.”

Do I digress, diverge, seem to be yendo por las ramas?  I think not.  Much is known of Eakins’ indebtedness to and reverence of Velazquez.  A figure in the background of “The Gross Clinic” even serves as a verbatim reference to the painter himself; a direct quote from “Las Meninas.”  Everybody knows this fact.  However, no one, to my knowledge has identified “The Gross Clinic” for what it actually is: an homage to Goya, and to the “Black Paintings” in particular, through the specific depiction of grotesques and phantasmal double imagery.

“The Gross Clinic” was recently purchased for 65 million dollars.  Hell!  I’ll happily sell my series for sixty five thousand dollars, one one thousandth of the price of the original, so that the people who bought it will actually know what the painting’s about!

Maybe I won’t post the previously mentioned expository prose, and just leave you all guessing, all two of you who are still reading my posts, as to what this good ol’ country boy genius is up to out here on the frontier of the mind.