Killing Art

I have primarily been a painter. With that comes the experience of killing my work.

Now, if you don't know what I mean when I say that, think about cooking a wonderful meal. You have done all the preparation, you know what you want to make, have a basic recipe and so you start cooking. Everything is going swell. Onions are frying up just right, some garlic and olive oil to get things going. You can tell that this is going to be one tasty and satisfying meal. Then you start adding the meat of the meal and that goes well too. Browning up real nice, you can hear the pop of the grease and sizzle of the yummy fat. Right now you got yourself a pretty good meal. Satisfying, fairly appealing and enough to feed you but tonight it just won't suffice.

No tonight you just saw Top Chef and realize that you could beat any of those cats, so you decide to spice it up. A little cumin, a little pepper, and then salt. But when you go to add the salt the lid comes off and empties out into your pretty little dish that you have just paid and worked so hard for. Bummer right? Totally.

But does this deter you? No (although it should because the meal is lost so go order a pizza already).

What can you do to counter act all that salt? Well, you could start by adding more ingredients, some potatoes to start sucking all that salt up, and why not, maybe some carrots, pinto beans and cauliflower for good measure. Now you are really cooking something, although you don't know what it is, and its not what you intended to make but at this point you have come this far and its all still hot and cooking so why stop now? You're just getting into it right?

Now with all this new stuff in the pot you realize that you need to add some water because this is turning into some sort of stew. Fair enough. Sounds delicious. Throw a can of tomatoes in there too for texture and color. Of course though with all this other stuff you already added to try to make up for your initial mistake, your stew is now overflowing. Without any other pots to transfer the scalding hot mess on your hands, it starts to boil over onto the burner and the olive oil that you used to start the dish with ignites a hot flash of light and pain. Soon the kitchen is engulfed with flames, people screaming, dreams lost, complete despair and all this from just wanting to make a little tasty something something to eat.

Boy, that sure didn't go well but somehow you managed to get out, save the family, cats and the dog but all was lost. But you know what? Even with all of that you find that you are still hungry. So since you've lost everything and all you have is what's left of your kitchen you go back to see what's there. You fear what you will find but somehow, magically, suprisingly, you realize that some of the meat might still be okay if you scraped away all that burnt, cruddy- muddy stuff. So you start carving away trying to find that tasty morsel that might just satisfy your hunger. It might just be there. Hopefully so, but if not, you will just have to give it to the dog. But the dog takes a half-sniff of this disaster in your hands and wants no part of it either and that is pretty sad.

That my friends is what painting is like for me and you know what? I am feeling a bit peckish...