Home is where the heart is

My American Mother used to remind me that when I first came to live w her I had said all trees were the same. There were not many trees in Saigon.

What I first saw at 334 Warwick were the majestic trees. They were so tall reaching toward the open sky and so expansive that hid any hint of suburban living. Later, I cried a little when PSE&G had to chop one of them down because a branch had fallen on the electrical lines between neighbors on a very severe frozen night. It was a blessing to live in nature by proxy. I have been to nature but never really living in one. This was 6 months before the descending of the COVID years that would quarantine all our family. No idea then of how the trees would be part of my life. I imagine that Cezanne didn't either but may be he had felt something after having painted 30 paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire (Cézanne) - Wikipedia.

334 Warwick has 2 large walls in the basement. Not the vertical kind of 13 ft ceiling of DUMBO loft studio but a long horizontal un impeding wall space 8 ft x 25 ft. Any New Yorker veteran painter would tell you that this is gold. Living w a large and long uninterrupted wall. In NYC, you would be lucky to have a little wall space to paint.

I want to make marks about my home environment the same way as someone once did in Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams - Wikipedia

The trees had evoked something in me. Not unlike when I swam in the open water.

In paints, w colors and movements, I want to approximate this feeling of watching the fluttering leaves and of silent swimming thru the enveloping water.

With breath and physicality.

And the same intention as the Dervish (A Brief History Of The Whirling Dervish (theculturetrip.com) )

A painting is always about the painter.