There is one thing that is sure,
Time is no healer,
for in time there is no patient.
T.S. Eliot

Tentative initial gestures in a painting are referred to as an understudy.

At the dawn of perception
in moments of apprehension
apparitions await substantiation.
Desire seeks a body.
Dreams fail the flesh

Understudied is a twelve-part cycle for the hours,
a repetition of a perpetual nature mort.

Each 18” x 24” oil on panel painting
renders a week’s supply of an AZT
cocktail on a silver platter.

Pharmaceutical companies spend more
each year on advertising than they do
on research and development.

A new and improved strain of AIDS
was reported of late in medical journals,
while 40,000,000 people were newly
infected with the HIV virus last year alone.

There have been 22 million
estimated deaths from the
beginning of the epidemic
through 2001,

leaving 14 million orphans.

The pandemic remains underreported, understudied and without remedy.