Bart Wilcox
Man Looking for His Hat, with Apple
2026, Gouache and acrylic on canvas, 16″ x 12″

“Don’t lose your head
looking for your hat,”
my father would say,
among many other
fragmentary aphorisms,
and as a child I assumed
this had happened to him
and so did not question it
or him, although I also never
asked what he meant or
where it came from, and
now I can only guess
that it was a phrase that
just occurred to him as
no one I know has ever had
it said to them. But what it
means is unimportant; it is
the image of the man
clinging desperately to his
head that sticks with me.