This is the painting that hangs above my bed, the image part of my pastiche. (I think) I bought this piece in an open market in South Africa during a rainstorm. Crouched under a little tarp, sheltered from the rain, I playfully haggled back and forth with the artist for about 45 minutes. By the end of the storm, there were many people under that tarp and we were all old friends.
And I was the owner of this painting.
What really makes me happy, or rather, gives me satisfaction, in this painting are the little pieces - the fragments that tell a bit more of the story. The pieces that remind me of a moment, a place, and a time.
There are several bootprints along the edges of the canvas, where people in the open market stepped to get by, or to huddle under tarps.
I like that the back of the canvas is soft, worn a bit - something that was carried around,
folded and rolled - long before it became mine.
And there are the tattered edges, from where this painting has traveled with me, a marker of 'home' in almost every place I have lived as an adult.
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