Two hands, a strip of paper, and a light. That is the oldest arrangement in painting and I have painted it about forty times.
What is different here is what happens when you get close. The ticket is blank. There is no number on it.
I tore it out of the dispenser myself and I lifted it toward the tube the way you do, at an angle, to get the print out of the shadow, and there was no print. The roll had run past its ink or the ink had never been loaded or the thermal head was dead. I stood there holding it for longer than I want to admit, turning it over, checking the back.
Understand that I could have painted this panel any way I liked. I could have put a number on it. The series had a number planned for it. I painted the blank because the blank is what my hands were holding, and because a man raising an unmarked piece of paper into the only light in a dark room is a better picture than a man raising a receipt.
The hands are mine and they are not flattered. Twelve years on a truck leaves a specific record in the knuckles, and I have never seen the point of painting that out. They are doing the correct thing with the paper. They are holding it delicately, at the edges, the way you hold a document you believe is about to tell you something.
The dispenser is still there on the right with its mouth open. The tube is above and slightly behind, so the paper is lit through rather than lit on, and you can see the grain of it, which is the only detail the object has to give.
I sat down after this with a blank ticket in my hand and I waited anyway. That is the part I would like somebody to explain to me. I knew it was blank. I sat down anyway, and I watched the red display, and I waited for a number I did not have to come up.