,11/25/96  The art supply retailer had five colors of fluorescent paint and I wanted to use them all on a maze.  It took a lot of trial and error to settle on the best blob sizes and color separation.  The larger particles, as in this painting, suggest running water;  the smaller size particles, such as in 11/18/99, suggest boiling liquid.  It sounds strange, but this maze spookily clued me that I was on the right track;  some of the blue lines seemed to suggest my grandmother’s smile, and one of the paint blobs looked a bit like an elephant that might have appeared on her charm bracelet.  In my family, grandma was the ace, anything that made her smile must be good.

   Eventually I realized that my four-color spacing technique was actually the solution to a famous mathematical problem called the Four Color Map Conjecture.  It dates back to the eighteenth century cartographers who used to color all the countries of the British Empire in red, France and all its colonies blue, the lands ruled by Portugal in orange, and the Spanish Empire in green.  They wondered what was the minimum number of colors that would be needed on a map to insure that no two identically colored countries touched each other.  Last century, the computer said the answer was four, but mathematicians continue to argue whether that answer is valid for an infinite number of countries.  I solve the problem with my eye and my hand.  If they had asked me, I would have told them the answer.

2/27/97

  One of my best nudes, the first one where a gallery visitor actually recognized it as a bondage position and called out, “I know what her hands and feat are doing”.  At my house, it’s called the Lotto position. When the prize gets over $400 million it’s almost a fair bet, but I’m not going to play quick picks for that kind of money.  I want genuine lucky numbers, such as my girlfriend’s measurements, her height, and her age.  But I’m not going to let her just tell me her measurements, what if she says 36 and the winning number is 37?   I’d just go nuts.   The only way to prevent such a disaster is to chain her hands to the ceiling and take the measurements myself.  Even in Lotto, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.