Introduction

Sei Smith

For most paintings, the beginning is filled with excitement, growing and changing in a constant state of becoming. Colors appear and are covered as they are massaged by the corse hairs of the brush. The painting is moved around the room, on the wall, on the table, an easel, the floor…then one day the changes stop. The attention of their creator fades and the painting sits still in a corner. If they are lucky a wayward curator may pick them up and hang them back on the wall for a few moments. Days later they may be wrapped in cozy packing materials and begin a journey outside of the studio for the first time. They may hang in a beautiful new home with new friends or in the dark of some lonely storage space, but where ever they end up their life has been set. No more changes save for the wear and tear of age. Paintings, like most contrived creations, always end up stuck in time. 

Of course, paintings are still just inanimate objects. No matter how many emotions or ideas they may evokes, no matter how we anthropomorphize them, at the end of the day they are just a collection of materials intwined for eternity (or until they rot).  

But for this “painting’s journey” let’s suspend disbelief for a moment and pretend this painting is a young traveler out to see the world for the first time. With no intentions or expectations, the painting travels from home to home. Visiting writer friends of the paintings “father.” It crashes for a week with one writer then heads out to the next apartment. Sometimes the writers take the painting with them as they travel through the city or out of it. Sometimes the painting hangs back and stays in the writers apartment, watching the shadows cycle as the writer comes and goes. After six weeks of travel the painting returns home.

This is a small collection of the paintings interactions with its hosts, as told by the hosts themselves. Taking form as essays, stories and poems, this is what comes out when you have a painting as a house guest.