Commute 

Monday through Friday, at 7:30 in morning and again at 4:30 in afternoon, I make my daily commute 26 minutes up and down I 71, from Louisville to Oldham County, a route where they are expanding the highway. En route, I take photographs with my phone. Through the car window or better yet, of and through the car window: the mirrors, the console, check engine light, the glimpses of the woods and the roadside that whiz by as I cruise down the highway on my way to work. When I come home from work, I scroll through my photos on my phone, to see what I saw. An orange cone in front of a pile of torn up trees, the play of violet morning light on a neat pile of rubble. A newly blasted hillside covered in a scrim of net seeded with grass. I scan for road kill, the thrill of the splayed body of a coyote.  I chat with my kids in my bedroom studio and paint from my phone. I set a 26 minute timer, mirroring my commute time. The paintings I make are straight forward. I am using paint to thicken the time of the commute. To acknowledge the landscape that is disappearing day by day, being laid flat gray of concrete. Soon only the sky will have color.