Somebody gets carried through the middle of it. Around them, a town's worth of people, a family — some met head-on, close enough to touch, some seen from the air, the way wars are reported on now. Social media from the ground. Aerial by the perpetrators. This is both at once: the ground view and the drone view, the face and the map. Up close the marks are bodies. Step back and the bodies are weather / shrapnel. Worked, taken apart, worked again. At some point the picture gives way to a vortex of figures too many to count — a search running through the rubble of its own marks: for meaning, for bodies, for anyone.

The line at the bottom came from a headline, possibly — idk: today the army killed a clown, and that shit ain't funny. I had a friend, he took me to a theatre where kids learned to clown inside a war. He kept it going until he got killed. This painting comes from there. There's a famous way to paint a war: take all the color out. This one keeps four — red, green, black, white. The colors of a watermelon. A bullet going through watermelon in super slow motion.

Taking sides is the fastest thing one does — faster than seeing. This is built to hold you before the decision: marks that are almost bodies, bodies that are almost targets. That's the targeting soldier's second, too. Look before you decide, or after — or never know what you did or what was done. That moment between what happens and what you do about it is where your freedom is.

I want the eye to refuse the urge to normalize.