THIS IS IT.

This idea is something I've toyed with for a number of years. I was sooo frustrated tonight. I started reworking the earlier slab of cement and I was just angry. Process had turned into madness and I was cursing during each layer of paint. It's not what I wanted. It wasn't coming out. A few years ago I started incorporating the stenciled alphabet in the corner of my work.

I was asked what it meant and why I did it. My answer "I don't know" but there was something AMAZING about it, something that I fell in love with each time I applied the stencil. I hadn't come to a point of resolution or resolve in what I was doing, I was still based in figurative work, drifting into a more decorative style in terms of painting a branch or a leaf. I was satisfied with my work but not excited about it.

When I had been questioned about the application and use of the stencil, I perceived the questions as threats, or possibly doubts about my talent and vision. I stopped using them after a while. I somehow believed, because of that conversation that it was a device that wasn't working because I had no motivation.

Tonight I nearly threw the original cement slab against the wall. I had layered it and primed it and detailed it, blah blah. I HATED IT. I wanted to paint a person in a globe in the center of the piece but it wasn't happening. I don't think I wanted a person in there, I felt like there should be, based on what I thought other people like or expected to see.

My work has never been easy to understand, for me or anyone else. It's never an easy process. I don't really want it to be, but for the most part it's been enjoyable. Three days ago all my work I did in california burned up in a storage unit. Everything is gone except for the large 12 piece that's on my myspace page and a piece that I painted the day a friend of mine died.

EVERYTHING ELSE IS GONE. There is only a digital record of those pieces, and they're really not great pictures anyway.

I've been angry [creatively speaking]. I'm ADD, and impatient, and those aren't the best qualities in a painter and I've always tried to play to my strengths and create from what flows so that my attention span isn't a factor in the creation process. I don't want instant art, it's never usually that successful nor does it say much. I want art that reflects who I am and the thousands of words that travel in my head at a breakneck speed.

This piece tonight is a breakthrough, the breakthrough I've searched for and it was so simple, so easy, and always there.

Every piece from here on out will be a reflection of this and it's what I've always wanted.

J.M. Prater