Reflections on Philip Guston
Verbal Equivalents (For Philip Guston)

the breathing of and listening

to paint

the openness, sensuousness, messiness—the restlessness

paint becomes a sentient thing

divesting what we already know

with urgency, courage, freedom, directness

the eye watching the eye paint

turning fidgety anxiety to mindful and feeling action, the agitation acting upon resistance of matter:

spindly accretions of clumsy forms, brooding gestures, diffuse edges, nervous measures

of body, traces of hand

thinking out loud

the enigma, the mystery, the empty vessel of doubt

places, people and states nearly emerge from pure material, conjured by titles: traveler, actor, the room, path, alchemist, garden, winter, vessel

non-scape, greyscape, brushscrape, zigzagscape,
innerscape, sootscape

the brimming vessel of possibility

doubt itself acculumates form

arachnid meandering, muscle-memory wandering, octopoid reach

of bristling weave:

the third hand, the empathy of thought and feeling: tangibilis

in touch we feel for others, we’re all hoods

the distillation of thinking and doing, what is concealed and hidden

following the mistakes
the surface seems alive
paint disappears