ChrisMichellPhone Painting

All I really cared about was color and texture, in 1999, when my friend Chris would come to my apartment, armed with wine, to watch Shakespeare productions on video. I had already painted a few paintings of phones. I needed a shape to assault with color and experiment with texture. It almost didn't matter what shape it took. I was not interested in form, and barely interested in composition. I answered phones, all day, as a receptionist, and the design of phones, the symbolism...was interesting. People had yet to become completely obsessed with their phones, the way they are now.

One day, Chris brought me a gigantic blank canvas, and asked me to fill it. He only asked that it go with his apartment, which had pink linoleum. A challenge. I drew a very basic phone shape, and blocked out the blue color, with the pink background, and then didn't touch it again for months. Eventually my friend Sean began to come to Shakespeare night. And time brought us to the point where my friend Chris bought a house and wanted to unveil his gigantic phone painting, and my friend Sean wanted me to have his baby. So, I sat down and finished the painting and the baby, right around the same time. I waddled to the housewarming, where the painting was well-received.

Chris told me he was relieved that it wasn't horrible. A close friend of Chris's commented that the phone had no cord, and the numbers were dripping off the face of the phone. He asked why...I wondered...did he not know Chris? Chris was just brilliant, and very verbal, but extremely reserved. You got the sense that there was this wonderfully exhuberant person in this quiet shell. He could also be a little forceful. That is why the painting is confrontational in it's position. The light from above, again, meant to convey his intelligence. I would have to check, but I believe the painting is about 4' by 3'. It's dominant, and vibrant.

Even more time went by, and Chris got married. It was immediately evident that his new wife didn't like me, nor did she appreciate big blue phones. (She preferred subtlety). Chris took it to some office he had, for a while, and then they moved to Chicago, so the painting came back to live with me. I did not have pink linoleum, so I used a knife and smeared on some blue and green that to me looks like a methane cloud. Chris asked that I keep the name "ChrisMichellPhone" if I sell it or show it, but around the house we call it the Flaming Blue Phone. It is alight with a consciousness that I find rare in the world, like Chris.

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