I found one photographic image particularly intriguing in its conceptual folding in of form and content. On a pretty large canvas/panel, we see a faint blow up of a photograph of TR's mother when she was still in her prime. The monochrome is a dirty stain of ochre, which is in fact the residue of second hand smoke from the burning of hundreds of cigarettes. It is a “smoke-a-graph” (i.e. Man Ray) made from a build up of toxic carcinogens. In effect, the image is neither “painted” nor “developed”; it is smoked.

 But does this effect create a ghostly representation of beauty? Is it a study of a smoker’s gloomy habit and habitat? Is it a confession of his 7fixation on her fix? Is it his meditation on her method of stamping out her life one butt at a time? (What I earlier referred to as my own dependency on what was there to kill me whenever I needed to die?)

TR’s “stain” allows us to witness the ghost flickering like a puff of smoke in a strobe. It allows us to witness her pestering return and to verify that she will simply not let go. And so the brave artist exposes this habit and his cohabitator, allowing us to take the muse off his hands so that he may finally be alone.

-from Jeremy Sigler's essay in the TOTAH catalogue Pale Fires