Charcoal Poems near completion

Some other notes, this on getting started:

Too fricken busy!! Phone call with an old friend who's in town, arrangements, dogs out twice, a sunny day so photos of some of my poets drawings, breakfast followed immediately by lunch because I was still hungry, lol. I did start filling in more of the green but ran out of the mixture, which was from last September in a small plastic Sushi container for ginger, and so have to re-mix. But, first, tea! Lol. Lol!

Some many hours later, well into the evening:

It's gone back to where it was, after a lot of rubbing with an old, wet tea towel.

And, finally:

The shadow beside her is back, though. I've struggled with it. Shadows in the sense of the unacknowledged repressed hidden sides of us are like that. They can't be painted green. Scribbled in charcoal only.

So it doesn't look like the image posted below. Now I'm thinking to get some fresh Gesso and work it so that there is a green base and then scribble the charcoal over that.

I began this painting a few weeks after my mother's death last September. There is a lot of grief in it. It's not a happy, giddy circus and while greening the shadow makes for a more pleasing painting, that's not the point. The problematic scribble of charcoal beside her is part of the composition of the painting. Charcoal Poems will find its viewers.

The painting is also a calligraphy and maintaining the stroke of the charcoal, a type of poetry itself, an illegible dream writing, perhaps the compositions of loss, the scribble the speaks of the disjunctures, expresses it in incoherent terms, and so has to remain, however I finally work it.

Where it's at after last night's paint-a-thon. Below, where it was just before that.



With a solo show in early May at Q Space in Toronto, I need to get this finished so the oils will be dry! (I use water-soluble oil paints, so it should be ok.) Today was the day. Get down to it, I told myself. And somehow I did. Likely I'll tinker for a few more days, but time has run out.

I'm thinking that big black shape next to her - it's lovely willow charcoal set with a fixative, and where I began this painting - has to be dealt with. Or not. (At this moment it's not working for me, but that can change in an hour, or a day.)

Charcoal Poems, near completion, 2013, 5' x 5', willow charcoal, India ink, oils on double primed canvas.

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