When I sold my first house, I promptly turned around and took two suitcases and headed to Switzerland and then the South of France.  It was two weeks of train rides, boat excursions, long car rides in traffic crossing from one country into another, and the celebration of a friends significant “round birthday” as a dear colleague of mine likes to refer to changes in decades.  I can tell you exactly what I read:  Night Film by Marisha Pessl, the Heidi-eque hillsides, and goats weighed down by cow bells, I can recall the wine bar in Geneva with a big smile on my face, the bats flying overhead while dining outdoors gazing at the Riviera below.  I can remember all this, but whole years are a blur to me.  It’s moments like these that mark time, and force it to stand still.  It is one of the reasons, I buy and sell, uprooting at a constant, and frenetic pace.  It’s these moments that mark time.

At last … Soft Thunder … Stephanie Shank en route to Boston.

This flip, I am allowing myself to buy a painting that I have been wanting with a baited breath anticipation, ringed in a panic that someone else would buy it before I was able.  Wrong really to want a material thing so much you dream of it.  But Stephanie Shank – the Artist articulates the why of this haunting need.  Her art isn’t about some acquisition, some painting on a wall, it’s the embodiment of “raw emotion and the power of now”.  Yes, that’s what I’m buying….or I admit, without any guilt whatsoever – have already purchased.  It’s called “Soft Thunder” which is a title that suits me.  I’m all about the oxymoron.  I live in contradictions.  Why would anyone want to be stamped with just one label—so boringly limiting, don’t you think?

Hearing the Grass . Stephanie Shank – http://www.stephanieshank.com

I can really fall into this painting.  It will be both the inspiration and the centerpiece of my next project.  Though I have never met Stephanie before, she creates her art in Arizona and I stumbled across it in Dallas, and it will find its way back to me via New Orleans.  Don’t ask.  If there was a straightforward way of doing something, I’d likely avoid it.  Nonetheless, I’d like to believe that it would please Stephanie that her vivid brushstrokes and passionate use of deep hues will serve as my muse.  So the planning begins.

Splitting Time . Stephanie Shank . Brilliant!