(Ross: You said on the phone—send it—so here—Maybe it is my euphoria—don’t know. P):
Dear Ross, Just completed a picture (Picture?)—the last stages of doing it was a 24 hour bout—so many images and structures painted out—They do not satisfy now. Something is happening to me and I do not know what it is.—As I look at it now, after some sleep, it feels so compressed—ordained and remote. Yet it is so simple to look at. No—it is not simple to look at all. It is as if it is now all for the mind—whose thoughts are pinned—riveted down—but it moves in the mind—IN A NARROW RANGE—moves, not roams. The least—almost nothing for the eye—just enough—one even doesn’t need to “look”—too unnerving. When I am away from it, my thoughts revolve around this image. Where has it been before, masked & hidden. I think I have known this image all my life but did not make it visible before. And it is not possible to retrace all the steps that led towards this finality—like running a movie backwards. It would be delicious to remember all those pretend “finished” images that were painted out—but I cannot remember—bits, pieces, maybe—as if my mind does an erasing job on memory, since here concretely is the doomed outcome. I began shaking—trembling, when it was done. As if an heretofore unfaced truth (a verdict?) was at last faced. Everything else feels frivolous to me. Now where do I go—move.
“Art” is not needed; for, like living out our lives—it is putting in some time & activity—staving off the “other”—the ultimate form. It is nerve-wracking—the need to fix an image forever—like a Pyramid on the desert. It does not move—I am tired of moving—and where is there to move? Who hasn’t heard that “art” is “life-enhancing”—the “élan vital,” and etc, etc. As if art was an exerciser, a bicycle, in the living room.
I have known, but did not permit myself heretofore to recognize that art is death—a death. That the purpose of creating is to kill it or at least get rid of it—once and for all. Now, I truly am fearful of creating—such a dread of it.
Our processes are so mysterious—I know I’ll begin again—to relive the same experience.
I felt like talking to you.
[1978]