Water

"Nights Without End: -- maybe 20 years old . . . 

The reverse side, showing it rotted off its stretcher bars!!!

A week or so ago, as I was looking at some small sketches and paintings of maybe 20 or so years past, I discovered that a leak in my studio roof had been dripping, dripping, dripping water on some of that older work.  It was so bad that that canvas on the paintings had completely rotted off their stretcher bars!  Now the works destroyed were not that accomplished (haha!) nor important, I guess, but they held great value to me . . . especially a small painting called "Nights Without End (Anais and Friend Meet Brancusi)."  A crude technique, but still an important part of the series of Anais Nin themed paintings (Anais and Artaud -- "My Love for You is On Another Plane";  Anais at the Turkish Bath;  Anais and School Bus, etc.)  that concluded with the large triumph (at the time) "Frederico as Henry Miller (with Anais and June)" a painting that bridged the Anais and the more artistically successful Frederico series of paintings.

So now I am a little reluctant to examine my storage of large paintings to see what else water, mold, or rodents may have done . . .

So it goes . . .and it is good that there is always the next painting . . .