I remember the years differently now. 

In the beginning memories were clear and the order which events occurred was easily placed in a chronological sequence.

Its all a blur… 

Memories exist like paintings hanging in dark hallways.  I glance up from time to time and recall the memory and the moment, but the manner in which things really happened is too distant.

I realize this does seem rather extreme (even for me), but this is simply how my mind operates. 

I reinvent myself every few years and the old me seems to quietly fall asleep and die.  I retain the experiences from these past lives, but my new self doesn’t fully connect.

Last night I watched *Lost in Translation* and I was telling a friend I loved the movie, however I could not relate to the characters.  I think I’m too old to remember what it was like to be in my early twenties and I’m too young to connect with a middle aged man going through a mid-life crisis. 

I did however connect with the reality of doors shutting which can never be opened again and how the decisions we make in *this* life are infinitely more permanent than ever anticipated.

Time is so relative and surveying thirty-thousand years of art history this summer further enlightened me to the fact that our lifetime is just a blink of the eye to humanity.

Life is everything and nothing. 

The more we love life, the more precious it becomes. 

Maybe that is the answer? 

To simply wait and anticipate a better day in the future may add some reciprocal value to our current life, however this seems like a false and temporary version of happiness.

We all have an insatiable desire to *lose* ourselves in a moment.  Through music, dancing, adrenaline, surfing, sex, yoga, meditation we lose ourselves in the experience and capture an eternal moment which would have been forever lost.

I seek to paint *these* unbelievable moments, moments which go far beyond all imaginable feelings and are indescribable in any language.

Tonight I am working on a painting of one of my kindest friends.  Scott has a unbelievable gift with music and we had a nice jam session on the ukulele the other night.  Scott’s portrait captures the moment he loses himself in song and in a very real facet this truly feels as if I am painting his soul.

 

I believe these are the portraits I am here to paint and these are the images of life which make *me* feel alive.  Models needed, apply within

-Thomas