The studio is oddly still. The varnish on the last two paintings to be included in the exhibition in Santa Fe is slowly drying. Uncharacteristically for New Mexico, dense humidity struggles to keep the paintings untouchable. Cleaning brushes after months of unblinking work is a lot like getting dressed after being baptized, somehow it should make you feel different. Instead, I simply wonder how many invisible dust mites are being drawn into the black hole of drying varnish and how am I ever going get the paint stains out of the sink. Tomorrow the two paintings will join the other eighteen works already at the gallery. By Friday morning, all the new works will be in place on the pristine walls and fate will take over. Sometimes silence is more deafening than noise.