I'll be driving across the blazing southland in a few days; time on the open road in solitude. I grew up in cars; my earliest memories are the strange inverted silly string of telephone poles and power lines against endless blue, humming by the backseat window of a mid-60's Volkswagen beetle. In those days, each exit was a mini-portal into another world - a distilled essence of the community on whose fringe it sat. While there was certainly a vernacular to those spaces; the gas station, the greasy spoon restaurant, the errant "adult" bookstore or beat-down strip bar for truckers, each one exuded character and occasional mystery. I took it all in at 55 mph, stretched out across the backseat with a favorite comic book, and the solid drone of highway just underneath the thin floor of German steel.

It is said conformity breeds contempt. When one drives across the land now everything looks essentially the same. You can almost identify the corporate package. There's no way to tell if you're in Bakersfield or Biloxi from the exits or the architecture...only the terrain and the sky can offer that revelation. It is as if the old spirits are desperately trying to whisper beneath the sprawl, "when you can no longer see us, you will all lose your way."

When I moved back to the South from California, I rode a mid-70's police bike along route 66 and across I-40. Me, the road, what few bags I could carry. I had lost all my possessions twice in my short life in San Diego; first to what I thought was love, second to a crack-addicted roommate who wanted to be a porn star. Since then I've always traveled light, and I can say I'm a lot happier.

When you travel by bike, you experience the road very differently. I outran mammoth weather fronts in Texas and Oklahoma, was sidelined by a tornado in Arkansas, and pummeled by rain in Tennessee. I can't say I'd do it again, at least not in my life's current incarnation. But were I to lose it all, I'd probably stick a 1% patch on my old leather and head back out onto the unending road.

Yet somehow I stumbled into a damn-near perfect life, and despite the many struggles I often write about I feel fortune most days. I'll always paint, even if I never sell another painting. As much as I'd like to be more successful as an artist, long ago I adopted what I consider to be Picasso's greatest lesson - make a lot of art, then make a lot more. If you can't be brilliant, be prolific and wait for something to stick.

I realize that I am hindered by place. There is no denying that. Yet I am equally liberated by it, free to make work that is self-contextual and shielded from the ever-shifting currents of what Art is Now, and the slow, agonizing and seemingly eternal death of painting. Though I'm currently out of medium and canvas, I'll bounce back next month and keep going.

Every painting teaches me something. There's something to that.

Mississippi awaits me this weekend, then back through Birmingham and the hot road to Atlanta and back into the palmetto state. The road trip is an art unto itself, I guess. The peculiar birthright of those us in the 48. All you need is a place to go and a way to get there, a fortitude to weather obstacles and an openness to discover what's along the way and sometimes take a diversion. That and a cache of excellent tunes as a personal soundtrack.

There's freedom in that.