Smoke

Smoke is a painting about unstable conditions — the kind of perception that comes from sustained movement, isolation, and working without a fixed ground. The imagery reflects a period in which the environment was constantly shifting, and the act of painting became a way of tracking what remained consistent and what did not.

Elements in the work come from direct observation, memory, and fragments that surfaced later in the process. The piece was not completed in a single pass. Layers were added as new material arrived — visual, experiential, associative. What the painting holds is not a unified scene but a composite: multiple moments from different conditions collapsed into a single surface.

A significant portion of the work was developed during a period of travel through Montana, where Banker was living and working out of his vehicle on public land. One night, late in the mountains, an encounter occurred that entered the work's imagery. What matters is the quality of attention that conditions like that produce — when the environment is unfamiliar enough to force real looking.

The painting is for the viewer who recognizes that feeling: the moment when ordinary perception loses its footing and something underneath briefly becomes visible. Not mystical. Just what happens when the usual referents are removed and the eye has to work differently.