Color Field underpass

Under the I-80, in a dim pocket of shade by a fence, there is a man. I’ve spent many summers watching him in San Francisco, but I’ve never learned his name. I wouldn’t know how to ask without breaking whatever fragile understanding exists between a passerby and a fixture. I believe he is homeless. He is also an artist. His paintings look similar to my keen-but-untrained eye, all abstract expressionist, geometric, fever-dream-core, painted in classic Color Field style. Each one shifts a little, a yellow spilling over here, a red there, but they are all warm and alive. The colors are fierce! Nuclear saffron, a yolky ochre, sometimes an orange blaze that might set off the canvas and then the whole damn underpass alight. I’ve made a point of looking up from the numbing glow of the Calendar app on my phone when I pass by, on my way from one commitment to another. He has a spot, carefully chosen, I think. In the mornings, if Karl the fog relents, a specific shaft of fugitive gold light hits

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• Jay Gupta