This, the largest of my Jackson Street paintings, was constructed a panel at a time from the middle, where the composition snagged and needed to go somewhere else.

I enjoy paintings that pose a challenge I cannot be initially know. I want something fairly specific, but don’t always know what that is. On the other hand, I am willing to watch it grow. In addition to this painting, there are two diptychs in this series – an indication that I wanted to see across, as well as up, over, and around things.

As I said, I am content to discover what I am after in the process of doing it.

And, indeed, whenever I would contemplate my “motif” from another place, it was what Hopper called its “lateral extent.” Because there were so many vacancies between places, the typical claustrophobic view of a house or property wasn’t possible. I had to see panoramically or risk losing my focus.

And because there is a storytelling component to at least some of the pictures, their design is crucial. This one is a case in point, because its small and sullen dramas took place across its length where people still tried to negotiate lives that were not much good, but were still worth living.

The backyard was somewhat strategically decorated with bottles you could walk across, like stones in a creek, until you got to where you wanted to go. Here the people who’d live in the house for a day or two would come and take their ease among the old trees and rusted appliances. Here they’d contemplate a journey they were perhaps not eager to continue. And here they’d fight with other people who wanted what they did – or just said something nasty and couldn’t run away fast enough. I saw such a fight and just let it happen. There are no peacemakers in the outback of a decaying city.

My own role in the conception of these pictures – and in their thematic unity – stems partly from my own love-and-hate relationship with cussed idleness, moral turpitude, and the straggler’s addiction to hidden places. Shade and solitude are poetic excuses; pragmatists know that, where they are, a lot of fucking-off is going on. And there is a distinct, if not dramatic, parallel to the act of observation and the practice of sloughing-off. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that keen and willful observation constitutes its very triumph. If you’re out painting a picture, you’re not really a bum because you’re doing something. But what you’re doing is closer, in spirit, to what those householders are doing in that building over there. They don’t have a schedule; nor do you. They’re not bound to job and family; you aren’t either. They answer only to themselves until they’re willing to hunker down and start making a living. I can’t think of a more succinct description of the sort of life I’ve been leading over the years, and will no doubt continue to lead for as long as I can get more industrious people to support me.

It is often said that any painter who is true to himself paints his autobiography. I joyously embrace the concept. In my case, it is nearly a hundred percent true.