Randy Hipke’s Foreword defined “truth” for me, and I’m glad I read it because, unintentionally, I’m a born liar. After perusing it, I knew the definition differences, and from now on I’m only telling the truth and not telling any more lies. The negative level my own lies might have attained was beginning to besmirch my credibility. One year, 1973 to be truthful, my brother Ed did one of two paintings titled TRUTH. On the back of one of the canvas was written by him, “It rhymes with Tooth,” and that particular one went into the collection of our family dentist.
After our dentist had sold that Truth to a producer, later on the good Dr. and his wife missed it so much that Ed painted them a bygones-be-bygones canvas titled TOOTH. So, to me, the Truth of the Circle is always in jeopardy because of how it is perceived by the one hearing it. My lies were usually told to appease their recipients, or to calm down anyone fraught with angst. Or to excuse myself from showing up at events which I did not care to attend.
With the assurance of one who has excused his brother in order to placate people who are trying to get him to respond, I will fabricate “bow-outs” for him. Then the interviewer will become softened to his often-steely resolve to not idly chatter about his work. You might call my excuses “white lies,” to lighten the blacker truths of any heavier meaning in the subject matter he creates. That he has not responded to any comments about his Circle painting doesn’t surprise me, therefore I feel that his canvas validates the word he’s chosen to paint: In – which leads the observer back to the original canvas, and thus invites the circle to be reviewed and repondered again.
I am happy that Laura Hipke has taken the thankless task of putting words into Ed’s mouth to fill in his unwritten essay about his Circle painting #49. Truly, his bulging-cheek lifetime career of words that inhabit his art allow him to remain monosyllabic and often silent. I’m surprised that he agreed to take part in the Circle because he has many projects ahead and he rarely has time to stop and answer questions or do interviews. When he does, then it is obvious that he is a man of few words, yet when he does speak, he often quietly constructs Will Rogers-like aphorisms, which can sometimes be found in his art.
After all these years, the Truth has finally come full Circle. And I’m glad I don’t have to lie about remaining cool while I’m anxiously anticipating the end of this multi-artist participation. It is quite interesting to see how the truth is parsed by each artist in their interpretation of the previous canvas. I’m sure it must have taken a load off Shane Guffogg’s mind (painting #1 in the Circle) in creating his version of truth which had no other gods before it.
I participated in the first half of the Circle of canvases, and I quite liked being curious about what would be interpreted by the one I had painted – then sent on – and so on. I was perplexed that there wasn’t a 50th canvas, but I surmised that it was because we’re all 49ers in this continual state of the Art of California.