Moving along developing your brand is convoluted. You often meet people who help you define what you don't want as much as what you do. There are opportunities everywhere but not every road leads to a good destination. And without a clear roadmap often all a person has to guide them in their decision making is intuition.
Early in 2018, one of my paintings was purchased by Kaiser Permanente for one of their new medical office buildings in Santa Rosa. I like the painting. It's actually my computer screen saver which has been my screen saver almost ever since I finished painting it. The painting is called Port Authority. I think a lot of the painting has to do with my childhood growing up in Northern NJ and going with my mother to see her old neighborhood on Allen Street. The Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street in NY was my way into and out of New York both physically and spiritually since going to New York with it's hustle and bustle was always an experience. The only thing I still don't get is why they named it Port Authority - it sounds very militaristic for a bus terminal. But it's a name that is hard to forget which may be the reason why the powers that be named it that.
Title: Port Authority
Medium: Oil & Colored Pencil on Canvas
Size: 24" x 30" x 1.5"
Corporate Collector: Kaiser Permanente
To me the bus terminal is a great metaphor for undertaking a journey. It epitomizes the concept of 'Moving On' and portends a brighter future for those who enter the terminal to use its services. I think a lot of what happens in our lives is serendipitous. That's how I met my wife Clare, artist Robert Rauschenberg and others whose sometimes brief presence in my life makes me realize how really good the really good people are ... and how important it is to keep those really good people around as the play starts and the journey begins.
Overall, selling the Port Authority painting to Kaiser has been a good experience especially since it was their art consultant that found me and selected that painting from my website. That is the good and positive serendipitous. It's the type of serendipitous that transcends local manipulations and enforces rightful balance in the universe. In the past the Romans hailed Jupiter to bring them good fortune. In this case Kaiser, a corporation, is the bearer of good fortune. Here's to continued good luck in the near future. At the very least I've lead off with the right painting and am at the terminal ready to board the bus headed for the next destination in the journey.
Ironically, as fate would have it, my wife was surfing the web and noticed something strange and familiar at the top of the Sonoma West Times website for April 4, 2018. It was a little thumbnail of my Port Authority painting with a link to the story about the selection of the art for the new Kaiser building. Here is the link to the article in the Sonoma West.
I'll share actual installation photos when they are available so stay tuned ...