Marcus Herse

 Visitor Welcome Center presents Eeek! A collection of paintings, music and memories by our late friend Geoff Tuck, co-curated by Marcus Herse.

Painting is blue, red, yellow, and green. It is round and grey, small, and off centered. It is intelligent, and charmingly stupid. It is orange and still, and collects dust. Painting seems easy until you try. Paintings are gold, shimmering and sultry, and made of the ground we walk on. They are technology and moon landings delivered in crates bigger than doorways. They are your friend, your dog, and your dog’s bone. Painting is for kids and old folks and trash cans and fields filled with flowers; they are trampled on and nurtured, rescued and discarded and started over—and signed. Painting is a gift, a follow through, foreign and curious.

Painting is a catastrophe—missing for years, dug up, tearful and relevant again. Painting—determined, mediocre and mysteriously flawed, perfect even. Painting is useful and unapologetic; it pretends. Painting tells you what to do, so you’ll get angry and say, Hey Painting! Stop telling me what to do! "No problem," painting says "stop looking at me." Painting is black and fabulous and far, it is the light on your lips, calm and exhausted, and calling you late night, I’m trying to sleep painting! Leave me alone! But painting is petty, and has already hung up.

Text by David Bell