Gallery Rent and Pandemic Art in New Arles When One Is Not The Hairy Potter

I was once offered four dollars

A portrait to do 300+ portraits

For employee birthdays

By the wife of a CEO of

An award winning company

A price that would barely

Cover the cost of materials

Shall we discuss the

Vestiges of this society painter?

Who feels real?

And trompe l'oil?

 

Credit to Off Book

Shall we discuss mortgages

Canna-friendly cleaning ladies

And those descended from

Chauffeurs, farriers and kings?

From hobos and drunkards

And queen-kissing ministers?

The merits and drawbacks of inventory

And the cost of goods sold?

The need to be a mechanic in the garage

A maid in the living room

Guy Fieri in the kitchen

A physicist, educator, investor, saint

And a whore in the back seat?

And do it tight lipped while

Baking cookies and pouring wine

For the Friday elite?

 

An asana.

Do it while going to funerals

Doctor appointments for those

Who qualify for help because

They were not condemned to be

Someone else's person

Silk purses and sows' ears

Pain begotten by negligent definitions

Of "odorless" and an industry that relies on

Volatile hypnosis

Open schedules

Patron pensions

And housewarming

Carbon-powered festivals

Silent auctions

And awards that don't pay the bills

This is why they often say

"I started out in watercolor"

Framed in such a way to suggest

That gallerists had found a way

To make pulp and pigment

Unsustainable

Chastising those who choose

To cut off their ears

Because Friday Night

Don't pay the rent

 

 

Saved by zero. Credit Delancey Place, The Importance of Nothing.

Do they teach this in

Art school?

Is there a course on the castigation of dilettantes

Or is that something learned

Between tokes and hors d'oeuvres

Required gallery sitting

And trips to the accountant?

Trust me, Karen

Art is an investment

An experiment in meaninglessness

And matter

Sold by engendered and fermented envy

A gimmick made of free time

And a sort of suffering love

 

 

Memento Mori from the Glue Factory, School Glue, Mica and Inktense on paper.

Don't worry, I'll keep painting

But I don't like being for sale

To fair-weather bidders

Who sell tomorrow for a gambit

Standing on a leviathan pile of bones

Please tell me about

Patrons, saints

Opioid-fueled endowments

Personal protective equipment

We were never educated to use

And the goddess of spring

Who keeps it all going

Invisibility only this selkie

Could understand

A high price paid

For the transcendental

The poet always knew

Was on the wind

Unburdened by futile peddling

But who am I to explore

The secrets of Vril

And failures of kindness?