Yet, on this rainy cold and broke day, I return to it, wondering. My manuscript is being written, yes, the artist is alive, so is the mother, but for how long without a job? This portrait was composed on the edge of.
Even I don't know who that woman is. Even I have never seen her before. She must be a literary figment...
It clicks to a larger and readable size, but you probably already know that...
Which is not large enough for some readers, oh Blogger.
Here is the text:
Self Portrait/Photopoem, Brenda Clews 2005 (self-reflexivity, the self produced in collision/collusion with the self)
[images here]
Is this the colour of the edge, where the light, eyes that, where it pours over, at the moment of, disappearing, that clarity, an obfuscated truth, the face, its waxy quality of lotus cream-colours, burnt auburn waves, emblazoning, meditating with open eyes, the gaze, un/self/conscious, always I take self-portraits on the edge of possible devastation, needing to see who I am... [the last 3 words bleeding into the larger portrait]
Bravely, or maybe secretively (since she's at school, the sweetie), I'm posting this as an echo to, some sort of personal response to, Jean's post on works the National Gallery in London on Self-Portraits; and Richard's post on Self-Portrait with photons in tandem with Jean's. Perhaps...that is; or perhaps those posts reminded me of this one buried in my hard drive.
Oh, I love this, and I do love self-portraits.
ReplyDeleteI can understand why your daughter felt it didn't look like you. It's that tired, too-close view we get in the mirror, I think. Not a view that others get, especially beloved others, because they see the warm, capable, mobile face, the look that is for them, the face that is a bigger part of you. But this face, both staring out and drawn inward, drawn towards the edge, is also you. I like it a lot.
Oh, Jean, you saw everything. It was actually Canadian Thanksgiving & I had no food & no money & didn't know if I'd even eat again, that desperate. At the library I emailed my mother, begging to be invited for dinner. She ignored me. I was angry, depressed, furious, defiant. I ended up doing a 5 hour meditation, the Dhrib Dhristi Lochina Karma Kriya (it's probably Sikh). The photo was somewhere in the midst of that. Afterwards, felt spiritually cleared. Then my daughter came home from her Dad's with a feast for me- turkey, gravy, vegetables, potatoes and my very favourite butternut squash, and the most delicious pumpkin pie that she herself had baked (she's almost 15). She insisted on watching me eat. I think she enjoyed seeing me enjoy her gift as much as I enjoyed the small feast she had pulled out of her backpack. It was the best Thanksgiving I have ever had. Someday maybe I can write about it, on the front page, and not in footnotes, in comments, in the underlayers of our posts, of our public writing...
ReplyDeleteI've been without work for 3 months (except one tutoring student), and only had enough for 1 month. So... with help from family, I have the very best son, and the best 2 brothers in the world, and even my mother has helped, but on her own terms.
Thank you for, once again, giving me an opportunity to talk of such difficulties, even if I can only in comments. *hugs xo
Brenda, warmest hugs. You're braver about going to the edge than I have been in recent years, and hearing your story gives me strength. No wonder there was a look on your face that your daughter didn't recognise! I hope things get easier soon.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me the most, Jean, is that I started to write a novella, an autobiographical piece, on this move, and saw it as an exploration of uncertainty. At what point do art and life intersect? Can we will ourselves into tight spots for our writing? Do we shape our paths to discover answers to our deepest questions about life and the nature of living? And how fair/unfair is it to propel my children along with me on this strange journey I have chosen to take? And why can't I write this novella/meditation on uncertainty in comfort on my still-in-storage couch, in a Wordsworthian 'recollected in tranquility'? -:) Ah, sigh. Thank you, Jean, thank you. xo
ReplyDeleteThank you, Tamar... writing about uncertainty (from a very subjective viewpoint) left theory at some point and became reality, though I never intended it that way(!). Do we call these things to ourselves? I have found an entire network of connections, though. Daily life seems composed of various scenarios of financial angst and more little miracles than I can keep up with... as often as I'm stressing with fear, my heart is overflowing with gratitude. Some huge learning going on here, I guess... *hugs xo
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how much sweeter victory is when it comes after defeat, how satiation after hunger, peace and gratitude after great angst.
ReplyDeleteJust wandered in here somehow, but love your writing and your paintings.
Brenda, you ask when does art and life intersect? Maybe your art and your life are intersecting right now. Sometimes the problem(?) is that we can't tell the one from the other. The "old" standard for making that distinction usually centered around some object, be it a poem, painting, whatever. But not only is that not the case today, the question, at least as I see it, is no longer a question to be asked. As I read what you describe about the journey you are on I can't but help feel that you might be connected to both simultaneously. Sometimes looking for the distinction between the two can be futile. Is ypur photo a self-portrait or a picture of the evidence that substantiates the "journey" that you have described or is it about the emphasis on your eyes that your daughter pointed out? Usually, self-portraits "portray" a given time spent or frozen in the moment. Tomorrow would have to be an entirely different portrait in terms of what happens between the one you did yesterday and the one you are about to do; and there you have some "idea" about art and life intersecting. But only if art is a thing. But is art a "thing?" I think it is "time" framed. By framed I mean lived!
ReplyDeleteI have always been conviced that art and life are not the same. I believe that art cannot be defined but life can. And if language is not capable of giving us an adaquate definition of art, and I don't think it has, then why bother our heads about it. I've always felt much more conviced when language is used to describe life; such as you have in your post. I think we should just do "it."
Sorry about the rambling but your dilemma deserved a response; for whatever it might be worth. Good luck on life's journey! I'm betting on you, not some idea I might have about art. Take care.
What a beautiful photopoem - what stories you tell in your comments!
ReplyDeleteBrenda, I've always been of an opinion that our lives have artistic elements and it's up to us to pull them out and isolate them, such as you've done here.
Thank you for sharing this inner life of you...with us.
patry francis - yes, your comment led me to realizing how clearly we only know one because of the other. And I reflected for a long time on counterpoint... thank you.
ReplyDeletelhombre - thank you for your thoughtful response. Though I'm not sure either life or art can be defined! The boundaries between them are not clear cut for me either. Sometimes our art can seem prophetic of our own lives. And our lives certainly affect what we explore in our art. Though I would agree that biography is only one possible interpretation of the work of an artist. And then, oh, surely all of us are the 'artwork' of Nature, aren't we. On this teeming, abundant earth. Perhaps neither art nor life can be definitively defined. There can only be a series of reflections and interpretations. That history rewrites...
adriana - surely we draw from our lives, our inner lives, when we create our art... though at what point a composition in words or visual medium or musical notation leaves being something meaningful only to us and moves others, speaks to them of themselves, opens vistas is anyone's guess. We just do what we do, loving each other all the while...
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Thanks for the good wishes and support too!
I like your thinking Brenda. As to whetehr or not we are "Nature's Art," "nature's" art, nature's "art" I will leave that to William Blake. But I have to say that even his words, as profound and beautiful as they may be, in the end, say...................................!
ReplyDeletebest!