From a letter David sent to Soren Larson, August 11, 2004

"My desire is not to be understood, but to understand. Appearances even under the best of circumstances are always, to a certain degree, misleading. So are words, sounds, etc.. Why bother then?

I doubt if Rembrandt wanted to be understood when he was painting his self portraits and Goya when he was doing the 'Disasters'. How about Velasquez when he was painting the royal children, dwarfs and a dog? Did their attempts have anything to do with 'understanding' and is the idea of being understood a modern thing?

I fear that the 'Dumb Shows' I have been doing are absurd works that are self serving. Do I gather any understanding of myself - or of my time - and is the accidental appearance of an illogical perspective and absurd juxtaposition of images, help me to understand?

Damn. My answer is yes.

As you know, people need their predicables, up is up and down is down and nature is natural and people are divided into us and them, and in general we are not in charge. Ultimately we need a superior being - a sounding board - a scapegoat. In short we need a hierarchy. My Dumb Shows disavow a hierarchy. Every institution we support demands a hierarchy. This is supposed to be a 'natural' state and essential to survival - the tribal leader and the shaman.

People need and seek reassurance, eh? So why on earth serve them up an image that bewilders them and leaves them with concern, in certain cases, but mostly disconnect?

Back to my first statement. I want to understand my own motive but perhaps that is a ludicrous thought. Or is it? In the process of pantomime are we forced into more basic, clean gestures? No illustrations, no complex descriptions, no music, no thunder, no psycho-babel, no smoke, no mirrors.

Redon would say everything is smoke and mirrors.

Or maybe the only way to understand myself is to end this verbal bull shit and paint my way into understanding that there is no understanding. There is only the desire.

See Soren, I don't want to miss something that could be a revelation hence my need to explore it a bit. Beauty of course is still an issue, even if it's a terrible beauty. Perhaps especially if it's a terrible beauty. However, beauty that doesn't reveal something unaccountable is usually simply pretty. Like a pretty girl as opposed to a beautiful woman. something like that.

Then there's truth. Oh boy. Anything is possible except truth. "The simple truth". There is nothing simple about truth in so far as I can discern.

"I have seen them at close of day" (1)

That large Rembrandt self portrait in the Frick

The small Goya etching self portrait

Mozart's 40th.

What in heaven's name do they have in common? Beauty? Revelation? Gravitas? And what does it take to do it?

I'm getting ahead of myself.

If I try to describe one of the Dumb Shows, I cannot. Instead of trying to, should I just proceed to paint? I think so. I think we both believe in a visual intuition. This horse wants to run.

Love, D "

Notes 1, Opening line, slightly misquoted, from 'Easter, 1916', a poem by William Butler Yeats