The man-made objects that attract me the most are organic in feeling or texture; their surfaces spall and deteriorate; their colors shift and fade; their noble simplicity is not open to question. Stone and brick; sand and earth; board and batten. These are – or, rather, were – the fundamental elements that made buildings soar (and then creak); welcomed the play of sunlight; warmed as the day got older. Quarries supplied the world’s architects and builders – as did the forests England had decimated early in its nationhood. In every city, there were kilns that took the “local color” of the soil to its walls and cisterns. Native sandstone was mortared together to make foundations; slate was laid on roofs; rip-rock filled a courtyard or patio. Public architecture was sculptural in feeling and in execution. At one time, there were probably as many stone-carvers in America as there are convenience-store clerks here today. In Look Homeward Angel, Old Gant was full of bombast and marble-dust, being a monument-maker by trade and a tragedian by inclination. In those days, artists were often undeclared, unless they went on a toot – or found God somehow. They were content with their day-jobs, as artist-types of the 21st Century are not.

Marble is the most luminous of all the stone man has used to glorify a thought or intention; notions of progress; intimations of things that are Too Powerful For Words. It was used sparingly in this country, and in structures that were most likely to endure. The old Patent Office in Washington, DC is a case in point. It is unashamedly classical, with an excellent brace of porticos and an elegantly linear quality the eye traces as lovingly as it can and still watch the traffic. Its majestic scale is still impressive. Walt Whitman was an admirer – as were countless citizens who approached it with an Idea. It was a building that suited the high moral grandeur of invention, for which it was great-room and repository. You could say that such a building is marble-clad and is, in part, a sham. In the old world, temples were hewn out of bedrock and well-nigh indestructible. Well, we did what we could here and made some decent things. Yet few shimmer as the old Patent Office still does, and that shimmer comes from its marble sheathing.

The most impressive structure of my youth was Memphis’ Pink Palace, a super-large creation that reflected, if nothing else, the colossal ego of Clarence Saunders, a grocer who went broke building it. In due course, it became the city museum – a dusky old grab-bag of Indian souvenirs, “fascinating” rock specimens, and slovenly tableaux involving gun and sword. A trophy room displayed the grisly wares of hunter-businessmen, who had gone to Africa and made supervised kills. A WPA muralist had decorated the walls alongside of the main staircase with Chickasaw Indians who were chasing around – and being chased by – Hernando DeSoto and his armor-clad minions. For once, the Indians seemed to be winning.

It was a fun place to while away a Saturday morning.

It was called Pink Palace because of the pinkish Tennessee marble that is, in actuality, a variegated color that “reads” as pink from a distance. Up close, it is wondrously complex, a color dictionary of dusty greys, spotted lakes and crimsons, and other colors that will forever be nameless. Pink does not do it justice, but, when you’re brand-naming something, you’ve got to simplify.

Later on in life, I gazed in awe at the old New Orleans Mint, a granite pile that had outlasted its initial purpose by a century and a half. Granite is a harder stone that, if you notice, looks marble-fresh in a cemetery whereas “real” marble has lost its shape somewhat because, when it rains these days, it rains sulfuric acid, or begets a chemical change that causes acidic deterioration in your great-grandfather’s nose.

I was not thinking of such things when I got down to cases and began to sort out one plane and color from another. Painting is a curiously neutral practice that is part meditation and part “man-oh-man-can-you-believe-I’m-getting-this?” I don’t think when I paint something. That comes later, or not at all. It is enough to reflect and suggest; to be true and honest if you can – and cheerfully fraudulent if you cannot.