Tender Loving Stuff
2 Haul Away Blvd.
Trash City
TLS 1H0
Unfinished Acrylic Painting on Canvas
Garage/Studio
On the Lane
Dear Unfinished Canvas:
I am truly sorry that I never got around to finishing you. What a life for a painting to be rolled up inside a cardboard tube in a metal drawer year after year, never to take your rightful place on a gallery wall, or even have your brilliant colours revealed in the light of day.
It must be particularly galling to know that you were painted as one of a set of four, and you were the only one left unfinished. It must have rankled when I opened your tube, and you saw the others all finished, and two of them hanging above the couch.
I am sure you wonder why you are not complete. You deserve an explanation. For a semester at Art College I was engrossed in junk food. I worked with chips, cheezies and candies. A single chocolate-covered maraschino cherry was the subject matter for many small drawings and sculptures. When the class was over you were in a pretty sketchy state. Some time later I put you back on the easel along with the others, one by one. The first one showing chocolates in a box seemed complete in loose brush strokes, although I never framed or hung it. Like you, it is a golden-section rectangle. You had too much paint on you already to pass as something dashed off quickly. The two abstracted chocolates on a square canvas seemed to demand the careful reworking which I subsequently did. They graced the walls of my mother’s house for years, and now they hang on mine.
I did intend to work on you again and would like to say that I will, but since that time I have rarely painted except for installations. I do promise to make a video that will need you as a backdrop. It will never make up for ending up with me instead of a serious painter, but it is the best I can do at the moment.
Sincerely,
for TLS
P.S. I cannot count the chocolates I had to eat to find the perfect one to paint.
Tender Loving Stuff 