"AiRES"

Sketch for "Dollaire;" Expected price: $1

There is a saying that when one doesn't do, one ends up only talking of doing things. To not fall into a "saying," I figured to make a sketch for an eventual painting series, called "AiRES." As you can see from the picture above, the series will take place in none other than a bar since I basically live there these days. Hahaha.... It will consist of people drinking, interacting and whatnot. One of the things depicted will be none other than money itself and will directly correlate with what the paintings are about. So, for instance, the painting called "Dollaire," which will cost $1 will be a painting focusing on what a dollar is or means. The paintings will also not just progress by its title and price value, but also its subject matter and the time depicted in the painting. So, in "Dollaire," for example, it might be early in the evening during happy hour and in "Tenaire," it might be later just before happy hour is ending. I think it would be a great challenge to paint what it's like a minute before happy hour turns into sad hour. And so on and so forth. Eventually, the last painting will be "Millionaire" and this will inevitably take place sometime during "last call" or just after. So, if you can follow me, each successive painting will build from the other, time-wise, money-wise, alcohol-level-wise, etc. In a way, it will be a narrative not unlike what one finds in churches of those paintings depicting religious stories.

Also worth mentioning is that all the work will be treated with the same attention to detail. The work costing $1 will be the same size as the work costing a million and it will have as much paint dabbed unto it as the others. I will not have a painting with just a blank canvas, for example and call it "zeroaire," as one fellow bar patron I told my idea to suggested. Even though I think it's kind of funny, I am not that much of a snob or an asshole.

So, that is what I have been up to this weekend. I have been thinking to myself how realistic this project will be. I don't have a studio or the money or even the motivation. The inspiration is there and the will to communicate it to people is there, as I have been telling everyone at work and at bars. But, their reaction suggest to me that they see it as just talk, or that I am merely trying to be clever.

Clever = Talk

Talk = Cheap

Cheap = Trick

Trick = Illusion

Illusion = Not Practical

The real trick is to be silent, in life and in work. But, as I have neither a life nor a work, I am talking, which is fine. Life is a bunch of transitions, anyway. I can work the 9-5 job and grind it out with the best of them. Or I can drop out of society altogether. It is only recently that I realize that one can have both. One can work the 9-5 job and be an ant during the day and become a platypus at night.