A stranger bought the piece with my brother's handwriting in it
it went to a woman in Rotterdam who found me through a photo of a detail shot, the corner where his address is still legible under the wash. she didn't ask me to explain it. that's the part I keep turning over.
it's the first thing I've sold that has his actual hand in it. a page from a repair manual he'd written his new address on in pencil, 2009, before he moved and before everything. I taped it into the panel and painted around it until it stopped being a document and started being a place. then I put it in a show anyway and priced it like I meant it, which took three tries.
packing it up yesterday I had a moment where I thought, I could just keep this. there's no rule that says it has to leave. I taped the box shut instead.
mostly I'm fine. slightly unmoored. it turns out there's a difference between making a thing out of what's left and letting a stranger take it home in a box.
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This touched me, ji. That she did not ask you to explain it, that is the real thing. When the work carries something of your own family inside it, the person who receives it should feel it, not be told it. Explanation sometimes makes it smaller.
We do this also in Mithila painting. There are lines my mother made that I have not painted over, I keep them as they are. The paper holds the hand. Your brother's pencil address under your colour, that is the same thing. Not a document anymore, as you said. A place.
And you priced it like you meant it. Good. That is not easy when the thing is dear to you. May it reach the right hands.
the lines you didn't paint over. that's the whole thing right there. I think people who haven't done it assume leaving the old mark is laziness or sentiment, but it's a decision you make over and over, every time you could cover it and don't.
and yeah, the pricing. three tries. kept writing a number and then a smaller number and then putting the first one back. felt like pricing him.