I am a terrible painter. I make absolutely awful paintings. I am completely aware of the myriad things I do exceedingly well: roasting a chicken, dancing, wearing weird skirts, using adverbs. The ancient art of painting (pane teeng) is not anywhere on that long list. But I love it. I really embrace my terrible painting.

I have long made valiant attempts at visual art. Fashion Plates and SpiroGraphics piqued my interest me at an early age. As a teenager I worked within the adolescent constraints of fingerpaint and collage. I really tried with photography, but something never quite, wait, wait for it...clicked.

A high school in Connecticut actually let me teach art for one semester. I was superb but often a mess. At first in photography I ruined a few rolls of film, because, hell, light gets in when you just peek into the dark bag, chemicals are unpredictable, as are creepy high schoolers who were always watching. But it's easy to capture cool pictures in black and white using the hallways and chain link fences of the football field as metaphors of your imprisoned existence. I call it the Camus/Corgan technique. Eventually all but the really dumb ones were successful.

Graphic Design was a trip because I am a reformed Luddite and technophobe engaged to a kick ass designer. Malcolm taught me the basics of Photoshop 7 and I would do my best to convey the information the next day in class, trying not to touch the computers or answer any questions about why this or that wasn't working or whatever. It became easier when I started talking more about art history and ideas. I devised a list of very cool projects that at least impressed the other teachers. An assignment inspired by the Jabberwocky is a rad project. You know it.

Malcolm and I started painting together when his heel was broken in Brooklyn. I made a terrible painting depicting my impression of To The Lighthouse. It was then I decided that I would only make paintings inspired by the writing of Virginia Woolf. It's gimmicky, sure, but it makes me truly happy. I love her. Recently I have been working on a Mrs. Dalloway, informed by her novel of course, but also The Hours by Michael Cunningham and the work of Frida Kahlo.

Using cheap paint and shitty canvas I am creating a painting truly magnificent in its lack of artistry or ability. In my mind I have symbols! themes! Surreal brushstrokes, an Impressionist´s tenderness, and the impasto of a Renaissance master! In reality I have a wonderful mess of colors and mishapen images. A big problem is my lack of fine motor skills. My drawing is unnaturally bad, like my math skills. Even though I see both of those beautiful subjects so clearly in my mind as Platonic ideals, my execution is disastrous. Pitiable. Heinous.

I love art. Great Art. I love The Louvre and The Met and even The Wadsworth Atheneum, where one of my favorites lives. I have an appreciation for the bad art of others, pretentious student stuff, still lifes in cheap motels, watercolors by ladies who live by the water with nothing else to do.

But it is really my own bad painting I am fondest of. The ritual of mixing color and washing brushes and squinting at work with bemused disdain is great fun, and the the finished product is so perfectly sub mediocre it sings. Next I will start an hommage to Orlando, one of the most enduring characters in literature. And I will hang them all above my desk, in my own room, when I have those cherished items again, and I will think about Virginia and Vanessa and all the gang and I will ponder the things I rot at as well as those I do tremendously, gloriously, sublimely well.