Firestarter:... today a story!

Today seems like a good day for a story. Enjoy!

From From The Cracks
Loree Harrell; 2002

A man walked into a bar. [oh no, wait that's a different story on a different subject altogether. Start over...]

FIRESTARTER
A man walked by on the street. More of a full-scale gallop, really, ice cream in hand, wife several paces out front and pulling away fast. As he pulled even with where I was sitting, he said, "Is this your work?". Before I had time to so much as nod, he asked me, "...what do you call it?" I shrugged and said, "I don't know, I don't call it anything." Well, by this time he was already several paces past me, but "... and have to keep her moving..." did drift back to me out of the early evening sunblind spot. Which leads me to remember there may have been a baby stroller involved in one half of the picture or t'other, but I couldn't swear to that because, as I mentioned, I was in a sunblind spot when I tried to look westish, and could pretty much only see that objects, which I assumed were usually going to be people, were moving towards me. So I just smiled a lot in the general direction of the objects, and said hello, when it seemed appropriate because they seemed to have - by a reduction in forwardly movement in my general vicinity - acknowledged my presence in the world, or that they were about to trip over an easel or my big feet because of opposing traffic.

Now you may be wondering why I didn't just put on sunglasses so I could see better, given that I was sitting in front of Troutdale Vision Clinic.

It's because I was sitting in front of Troutdale Vision Clinic, and they have real sunglasses in there. The good kind, with glass lenses and metal frames. Mine are plastic on plastic and cost 7.99 at Big Bear's Market and, while they generally serve me fine, damned if I was going to wear them right then. Seemed somehow disrespectful of my hosts on this First Friday Art Walk. Or, at the very least, entirely too starving-artisty.

Now see, this is why - exactly why - I "set myself the talk of letting this work tell its own stories"... the stories always get away from me. This one was supposed to be about that cheerful man who walked by. So back to it.

"What do you call your work?" was a perfectly valid question. Some people might call the painting abstract, but that doesn't feel right to me because it's anything but abstract in the working of it. Every bit of paint is exactly where I wanted it to go. Where the work wanted it to go. Some of the pieces could be considered by some people to be impressionistic. But then that would imply that I had a specific image in mind when I started to paint. Which I don't. Which I didn't. I was following my hand, and where it lead me was to "FireStarter". Some people have called the drawn versions of what I do scribble art. That just hurts my feelings - although certainly the very early work was - so I'm thinking I won't be calling it that.

Now I'm not a fan of labels, because I've found in my life that once you label a thing, it gets stuck inside the parameters of that label, but other people are, and I can't just keep shrugging my shoulders, so...
let's just call it "energetic" and be done with it.

"...what do you call it?"
"Energetic abstract."
Done.

Original Art & Prints www.artwanted.com/loree