A Bridge Through the Spectrum
September, 2008
Oil on Canvas, 24 x 32 in

An imperfect portrait of two students. I’d like to say that I painted them so that they looked unlike the actual students on purpose, in order to protect their anonymity. In fact, why don’ t I? It was on purpose! totally on purpose, that these guys are not nearly as beautiful as they are in life. Beauty is hard to capture, in any event.

There’s a load of foolishness out there, that I hope has become thoroughly taboo – that suggests that people who are “within the spectrum” are aloof and have no emotional attachments. I have worked with students who have hardly any language, and only a spare cupboard of classic social structures to reluctantly pick from when interacting with others – but to suggest that a lack of standardized social paradigms equals a lack of emotion is pure hogwash. Anyone spending a moment of time with these souls quickly learns there is a fatholmessness to the richness of their every experience and feeling.

I put the quote below because I think that poem is an argument in favor of those who can feel and love without the limitations of social structures and without words. I honor these people and the rich manner in which they can experience life. And, furthermore, these two are a bit of a love story… it just seems to fit.

since feeling is first

“since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis”

—e.e. cummings