A couple of weeks ago I got a call from a friend in Charleston, a member of the Coburg Dairy family, who wants a funky, cool painting of …. wait for it …. the Coburg Dairy sign! The original is for her, and then we are going to make prints for family members. The sign is iconic in the area, and although it’s changed over the years, most Charlestonians …. at least those who have been on the scene for a while …. consider it a treasured landmark … sort of like the statues of pigs adorning Piggly Wiggly owner Buzzy Newton’s Battery home.
As I settle in this evening, reviewing the photos she sent, I’m getting more and more excited. This will be too much fun … eventually. But right now I’m swimming in a sea of compositional elements and perspectives and palettes and scale and abstraction and yak yak yak. This is the time of unmoulded potential, the unconditioned about to take form …. known as the Fool in the Tarot deck. Pure potential is uncomfortable in a way because it’s just a bunch of ideas buzzing around with no organizing construct. But in that moment when the unifying idea emerges …. it feels like magic …. better than it has to be.
