I remember the advice I gave my sister, the summer before she went off to college. We were sitting as a family (minus my older brother Oliver who had succeeded in escaping one of the family vacations to a bizarre and forgotten part of the North America) in the upstairs of a restaurant (never sit upstairs, the service is awful) on Prince Edward Island (never go to Prince Edward Island, it’s boring). My advice to her: “don’t listen to other people’s advice. It doesn’t work,” I told her. I stand by that. I really do. One of my housemates would disagree. She has the advice from her mom tattooed onto her arm. “Make good choices,” her arm reads. Make good choices. It’s also on a pillow sitting on the couch in the living room. Make good choices. We have vastly different taste in interior design

 

I didn’t intend to start this essay on advice. I meant to write about why I do the things that I do, why I paint the things that I paint. 

 

I take much less pleasure painting something that should be painted, like a piece of paper or a canvas. Canvases are meant to be painted, and so are pieces of paper. Telephone polls, on the other hand, are not. Really look at the next telephone poll you pass. Really look at it. You’ll realize just how beautiful it is. Tall, circular, grey, brown. Covered with nails, wires, staples. Majestic manifestations of the human’s ability to conquer electricity. To heat our homes and power our lives. They are the penises of our street infrastructure. Tall, erect, steadfast, trustworthy. They are human and they are magnificent. 

 

Rewind.

 

In reality, I see telephone polls not as manifestations of our superiority to nature but rather as manifestations of our separation from nature. Of our disregard for the built environment and the exploitation and waste of our natural resources. 

 

And I paint them because they’re ugly, because painting them bright colors make them prettier. I paint them because they’re meant to be forgotten and overlooked. I paint them out of resistance 

 

I think the best advice is: learn by doing. Don’t talk without acting. Don’t waste oxygen. If you see a problem you can fix, fix it. That’s why I paint poles: I learn more about myself with each pole I paint.