Birth of THIS IS IT Oil, acrylic and leather on canvas, 18"w x 44"h, 2002 From a private collection Notes: I realized only after I finished this piece how similar it is to a current situation I’m in. Within the past several months I have been going to see a therapist. She does cognitive therapy as well as visualization, which is sort of a directed exploration of the subconscious. Sort of like a directed waking dream that tries to uncover important things that people are thinking about but that don’t necessarily reach the surface. Her office is in her big old house in south LA that is a beautiful and intimate wood, brick structure. There is lots of nice woodwork, a big old staircase, the whole deal. The room in which our sessions happen is in a den in the center of the first floor. My therapist sits on a couch with a huge square window behind her. The window is covered by a huge bush or tree that is really complicated and dense. You can’t see anything other than the tree through the window. My therapist has a very interesting and strong features with an animated face and longish reddish hair in tight curls. In the painting, the top half of the scene depicts a strange complicated figure with vague human features like thumbs and fingers. It appears to be sort of sitting on an angled bench (In an earlier iteration of this painting there was a bench there with figures seated upon it). Behind that complex figure is a blue pattern that is almost cross hatched looking. Below is a realization: "This is it". It means what it means. Now’s the time to change, this is the beginning of something, maybe a new way of thinking, a new life. I realize now that this whole painting depicts the view from my chair in the den. The complex figure is my therapist sitting in front of the window. The blue pattern is the bush in the window and "This is it" is definitely something she has said in the past. It’s interesting that only after the piece was finished did I see the similarity. I can’t say for sure that I was actually reproducing this scene subconsciously but the similarities are striking.