When I asked Josephine to come out in the boat with me to do some paintings,
I thought that my post would be about a painting as a kind of map,
but I realized early on, that Josephine was making a different kind of map that day.
It was more like a diagram of a sentence or an electrical plan,
where the idea is to map things against each other, and look at the pattern of relations that they make.
You see, Josephine likes to paint places,
but each painting is not just a window into another world.
“I think of each painting almost like a child I have with a place – it is half me and half the place,” said Josephine,
“and all the paintings are half-siblings of each other.”
Lately, the sites that she is drawn to are industrial metal structures.
“Do you know what objectum sexuality is?” she asked,
“it is when a person falls in love with an object.”
“A lot of times, it will be a bridge or something, and the person will feel like they are in a real relationship with it.”
She brought this up to explain that she is not one of those,
but she had such a loving attention to the objects that we floated past, such a curiosity and desire to touch everything and look up close,
that I wondered if there was more to the affair than just all the related children.
We let the wind blow us out of the canal,
and marveled at the work of time and salt water on the undersides of things.
It was not long before we found another site to paint.
It had a nice square of rusted metal that was just Josephine’s type.
We found a way to brace the boat with ropes and paddles so that we wouldn’t drift while we worked.
It was a problem I had never thought about in the boat before.
“Sometimes I think that painting outside is just about finding a nice place to sit.” I said.
“and a connection to the place.” she added.
Now that we had looked at something up close for so long,
the environment seemed to stretch and change shape as we floated through.
The steel hung in various states of disrepair,
but I told Josephine how once I had seen a train pass over the trestle.
Somehow it was all still working.
It was like we were seeing the side of the city that you weren’t supposed to see,
and there were countless reminders.
We took the boat out of the water in Greenpoint,
and Josphine loaded her painting supplies back up in her pretty little van,
made just for carrying paintings.
Here is Josephine’s painting of the metal plate,
and here is mine of Josephine.
↑ Return to Top of Page ↑