This book is a catalog of over 500 images of painted photographs by A.M.Rousseau



From the Introduction



What I meant to say



This work is a kind of abstract but concrete

writing on photographs.

A kind of drawn word.

A skywriting with hieroglyphics.



Like Cy Twombly or Arnaulf Rainer with a little Eva Hesse and a lot of Sol Lewitt.

Like Brice Marden or Judy Bernstein or Elsworth Kelly and yes, Robert Smithson.

Like secret codes, or encrypted messages.

Like calligraphy, Chinese writing, or pictures of invisible neutrinos.

Like graffiti, but without the vandalism.



I am making speech visible.

I am writing on a blackboard,

I am making thought knowable

I am enscribing the wind,

Or breathing



Like living.

Like music, swinging,

Like a dance, or a charge.

Like time moving.

Like time made tangible



Like channeling, a message, a memory

Like everything moving.

Like meaning an explanation, an answer, a question.



Like a touch, a feeling of falling, or kissing, or holding.

Like loving, tasting, or hearing.

Like something flicked against your cheek,

Or slapped upside your head.



A spider weaves a web.

A fly makes a path in paint.

A little snake thing that moves.

A tiny tiny running dog.



Certainly like music.

An uplifting feeling,

something that rises, floats, flies,

and flings itself across the body,

or the mind.

It is like this.



AMR