One of my favorite things in the world are places that appear to be either abandoned or left to go to nature. There's something about an area that is untouched by man that feels somehow pure and virgin and full of possibility. The thing that is so funny about this. Is that often I fantasize about billing a house in the settings. Of course, my building and abode in the middle of the pure nature kind of spoils the point. However, I recognize that this is a fantasy a fantasy of being alone of being in solitude. The thing about nature is that when left to itself, it wants to grow to infinity, and yet it also controls itself and modulate itself. When I was younger a teenager to be exact, I started studying painting at a little tiny school in Forest Hills Queens. Calling me the school was for help perhaps generous: there was one teacher giving a class. There were two students in the class, myself and a boy whose name I forget this boy was very talented. He painted ships an incredible detail. I wondered if he was autistic on the spectrum. Certainly, he wasn't very talkative and all I wanted to do was gab gab gab with the teacher. I never knew quite what to paint. I was lacking in basic motor skills not to mention and understanding of composition and perspective and everything you need to be a good painter! But I did enjoy messing around with color. I'm feeling the brushes move across the canvas. While I was taking the class, I was reading a self-help book about learning to calm ones self and meditate. The books suggested that one close one's eyes and imagine the core of ones being what lay at the very deepest darkest most serene point of our soul. I knew exactly what was at the deep dark core of my soul. It was a burning out of control jungle something mankind had never encountered before tended or cared about, but I cared about this place because this place was me in essence. In truth when I decided my soul was a blooming jungle. I really hadn't factored in certain external influences. In fact, I was very gardening at this time and tending house plans and had several dozen of them in our timing little house in Queens. I was very good with plans and in elementary school took care of all the plants in my classroom. My former teachers in elementary school were so ruptured with my abilities with plants that I had special permission to leave class whenever I wanted to and go all over the building tending plants in classrooms. This was ideal for me because I'm very easily distracted and like to move around a lot. At this time in my life, I started school in Manhattan at Hunter College high school at 94th and Park, but my favorite place was a place at 53rd St. between Lexington and third Avenue. This was a plantstore called the 'Blooming Jungle.' I love this door so much. I would come here after school and just walk around. It wasn't a very big store, but it had an odd basement with large hanging lights over it and beautiful orchids, bromeliads and other epiphytes like staghorns. And so the place became centered in my heart. Years later, when I was going through a particularly difficult period and everything in my life seem to come to dust I thought about the Blooming Jungle store. I wonder what had become a bit over the years I started doodling quite absentmindedly with acrylic marker pens sometimes I'd switch to alcohol base pens and oil base pens. However, I never paid much attention to it as I wanted to keep it as free and unconscious as possible. Then during the pandemic I had 1 million zoom calls every day. OK not 1 million zoom calls but close to 6 to 9 zoom calls each last thing between 45 minutes and an hour. I started to really dislike my job. I had never realized how interactive it was when I really prefer to work by Myself. I found being in rooms with people very distracting, and I also found it impossible to remember what was talked about and decided. Usually, I tried to write down every word or close to every word that was spoken. I thought that by printing the words in my mind, I would remember what had happened in the meeting. This was actually not the case for one I couldn't read my handwriting, so the notes were pretty useless and for another thing, I wrote down everything so robotically without paying attention that it really didn't stick at all. And so then I decided I might as well I might as well amuse myself and keep myself pleasantly occupied. I kept a canvas several inches below the computer screen on the lower table. Ivan would let my hands do whatever they wanted sketching dueling with colors and markers and you name it suddenly seem much more pleasant. The best part of all was the surprise at the end of the meeting when I would see what it was I had been creating! This is one of those pandemic creations. It is longing for a world or nature is not only unbounded, but nurturing.

Artwork Size & Ink Base:

61 x122

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Daniel Aaron Schwartz

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