I stared at the fucking thing for months until, in that space, I had invested all my self doubts, confusion, ambivalence and anxiety. I found that the placement of a single point on the canvas, created an immediate and crushing perspective. It was a demanding shape. It was not the home of a sexy siren. It was not a two-dimensional plane through which passed the ethereal muse. It was a harping, grousing, nasty bitch that demanded attention. It was Mom.

Joining lines to that single dot created both infinite depth and infinite height. It drew me deep into it and it threatened to impale me all at once. Welcome home, son.

Nothing is entirely as it seems. There are two sides to every story. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Heads and tails. Electrons and protons. Bambi and Godzilla. Night and Day. “All the kids in the neighborhood loved Uncle Morrie. No one saw it coming.”

Rectangles beg for a single idea, an isolated subject. Rectangular paintings sometimes allow wandering beyond the four boundaries by insinuation or suggestion. But the space begs not to be divided, lest it lose focus. Every formula to divide a four-sided plane produces either a spatial discomfort or a rhythm so steady it’s headache inducing.

But even the most regular hexagon divides into sweet slices of something. Each unpainted segment has an inherent depth, a built-in direction, a point.

My mother was not a pretty woman. She went to the doctor because she felt out of sorts. She said, “Doc, you gotta help me. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.” The doctor instructed her to take off all her clothes, get down on all fours and crawl away from him, then back towards him. After she had, he considered for a moment, then told her, “ I can’t help you. I can’t tell whether you’re coming or going either.”