I know Pinot’s Pallette of Levittown prohibits free expression. I’m aware we agreed to mass reproduce an autumn sunset. But after botching my leaf pile I said, Fuck it, I’m going off the grid. You don’t tell Dave Henne where primrose lives and what chartreuse can and can’t do.

Your cookie-cutter canvases be damned. Landscapes are meant to be screamed from the frame. Any sensible artist with ten minutes lifetime painting experience knows this.

Check out these colors that aren’t on the recommended use list. Mixed ‘em up myself, drunk off freshly excavated talent and four full pours of rosé. And now I’m taking three illegal shades of brownish-green to town. Up and down this panorama which, at this point, I don’t even feel confident calling a panorama.

I guess I always sort of knew I’d emerge as a brilliant artist overnight. Putting in minimal effort, paying no dues, and having a middle school understanding of modern art movements.

I can’t wait for the group photo when we all pose with our paintings held aloft. Just like the Pre-Raphaelites used to do.

There’ll be Susan and Pam, embracing identical sunsets — then bam! Like a rocket from the Dark Ages, there’s me holding my painting. Half pointillism, half cubillism, with an outline of an orange horse that I didn’t fill in all the way because I got distracted by the door chimes.

I don’t know if it’s the fifth glass of wine or the cliché “painter’s high,” but I’m seriously considering taking up wine and painting full-time.

Sure, money will go quickly. I’ll have to shell out $45 every session. How else to obtain the essential brushes and canvases needed to express my vision? And, of course, I’ll need instructors to assign artwork for me to grossly misinterpret.

Drinking a nightly bottle of wine will be a necessity. The dark side of this whole movement. How cruel, the manner in which the wine/paint pairing sets you off on a course for stardom, but also self-destruction.

Well, if rosé shall be my downfall then so be it. Oh crap! I’ve been rinsing my brushes in my wine glass instead of my water glass.

Maybe it’s the water-soluble acrylic talking, but I’m still certain this painting will sell for a million bucks. Damnit! My elbow’s been leaning against the canvas for at least the last five minutes.

Hang on, if I rotate the painting 180 degrees… no, this isn’t any good.

Look at the smears, the manner in which the colors have bled into a true black. Almost as though I’ve not painted a sarcastic sunset, but the murky pulchritude that festers beneath our collective good intentions.

And what’s become of my half-filled orange horse? Now it’s more of an abstract representation of man’s proclivity for excess more than a hilariously inappropriate non sequitur.

The wretched hollowness of it! The abhorrent violation of my vision!

I’m still instagramming it on the off chance a famous art critic sees it and shares it with millions of followers, but still. This is not my best work.