Blind Spots

The blooms take the left side. Thick red, laid on with a loaded brush, sitting on top of black strokes dragged straight down the canvas. The flowers hold their shape. Everything behind them runs.

The right side looks empty. It isn't. There's a line written across the upper field in graphite and ballpoint, then brushed over in white until you have to stand close to read it. A ruled diagonal cuts down through the middle. Below that, near the bottom corner, the same line again — smaller, and scratched out this time.

Nothing on this canvas is hidden. It has just been made difficult to see. That's a different thing, and it's the whole painting.

The line comes from a poem called Blind Spots. On the page it reads in third person — beauty makes the best disguise, they never question pretty lies. On the canvas it changed to your. Somewhere between the poem and the painting it stopped being an observation and became an accusation.

Then it got painted over. Twice.