I am an artist.  Many artists are quite selective in what subjects they choose.

I usually don't think about it.  I just try to portray whatever I am painting or drawing with some truth, and embed it with some meaning that I appreciate.

Normally the subject of "subjects" doesn't come up.  

But in the past month, I noticed I have been sticking to a sereis of paintings that revolve around Telephone poles.  Odd choice, right?

I keep getting asked the same question: Why do I draw and paint images of telephone poles?

For one, they remind me of a time in America that has passed.
Nostalgia for the 1930s, depression era fields and twisting roads of the Midwest and American South.
They almost seem to go hand in hand with Delta Blues.
But travel anywhere, and you will see their familiar image, fading back like lined up dominoes, back into the distance.
They also have a certain symbolic meaning.
The ancient image of the crucifixion; the three crosses of Calvary.

They have a symmetry that to me is calming, like an old fence along a farmer's property, or a row of trees in a grove.

They remind me of railroads, of highways, of travel. Any traveler stares incessantly at these objects, and they no doubt inform the unconscious mind.
They litter the background of our lives.

They connect the present day with the past, and perhaps the future.
Perhaps they are aging giants that one day soon will disappear from our vocabulary; replaced by some newer form.
But for now, they decorate every street and avenue from Yazoo City to Brooklyn.

One could even point to speed, distance, connectivity--like a web. These poles span the globe, all connected by wire.
Just as the Internet does. If one were to represent a symbol of it, perhaps this simple old form would suffice.

But more than anything, I think they represent us. They can express loneliness. And they represent labor, repitition, endless depth. They line up just to stand still; they either represent places you're going, or a place you'll never get to.