Playing Blue Guitar

White, Color, and Liquin

I had done paintings on three small canvases. They were my experiments in color. I coated each canvas in a different color -- red, yellow, purple -- the ones I use most often. And I gridded them into twenty one-inch squares starting with four different solid colors in the middle -- yellow, red, blue, purple. In one direction I added white to the colors, and in the other I added liquin (a substance to thin the paint). (When Bud saw my Altoid tin of liquin he asked me why I was saving my loogies like that.)

I showed them to the art group and told them about what I did. Liquin, you know, is mildly toxic, and it reeks. I've read about life-long painters who suffer major health issues, lung and brain cancers, because of it. My apartment is not ventilated and sometimes I think the fumes are going to give me a bloody nose.

Judy, Pauline's daughter, said, "Oh, I love liquin because when you're done the room smells wonderful.

"Nothing brings me back to my childhood like the smell of coffee and Turpentine."

Nick and Nate

Kenyan Woman

Paintings