Dancer

Happy with this painting of a dancer in my Moleskine. Why? She is lithe and muscular, and has an elegance. She also looks like she's dancing in an ink painting. Splotches of black India ink move over her; she is situated in torrents of acrylic flame red ink. In her dance, she holds still for a moment and her pose imparts a tension of the energy of emotion. There is life, passion and death here.

What I most enjoyed was overdoing this piece. Many inks were dip penned and brush spread until it was a mess, and then, miraculously, I washed the inks off, using all my rags and a half roll of paper towels, wetting and blotting until the sketch began to re-emerge.

With that weight of paint removed from her, of which only I hold the memory, she is again lithe, ready to spring.

And I had to laugh when someone said she looked intersex, and admit ever since Fellini's Satyricon, and then Jung's exploration of the hermaphrodite, I've felt intersex in dreams or art can be a powerful image of inner union. If my Dancer appears to be both woman and man, I am delighted.

Not sure why, since I don't usually anymore, I scanned the sketch, and then the first wash of black India ink and permanent red acrylic ink, and I took an iPhone photo early in the process of adding the inks that I later removed. I have included these three in-process photos, along with the final one (it's first, on the left), for you so you can see the progression of this little painting that took the greater part of last Sunday to complete.

Dancer, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, graphite, India and acrylic inks, Moleskine folio Sketchbook A4.

                              

Drawing of a Young Man

I drew this on Saturday, from life, while wearing two pairs of glasses! An old pair of prescription readers enabled me to see detail at a distance, and a small drugstore pair perched on the end of my nose allowed me to see my drawing on the paper. Hopefully I can get progressive bifocal or perhaps trifocal lenses soon - it was a crazy way to draw! ::laughing:: Though I did achieve a likeness, something that's been inexplicably eluding me in my return to drawing. 

Figure, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, Moleskine folio Sketchbook, graphite.

                              

My mother, so far, is holding her own. She may survive this crisis, not with full capacities, but enough to live at a nursing home perhaps. My brother was looking after her, and called 911 when she said she was dizzy and then fell, and so she was at a stroke hospital within the hour. While she can't speak, and may never walk again, she will likely survive this crisis, and after a month or so in hospital move to a stroke rehab facility... beyond that we do not know.

I am relieved, of course, but sad to see how hard it will be for her. She will not ever go home again. And that is what she most wishes for. Spending the rest of her life in a nursing home or long term care facility may work out for her - she's always been extroverted, and the company, at the very least, will do her good.

While we are still some way from that, she is doing real well considering she had a stroke and a mild heart attack, and has pneumonia, and it is entirely feasible she may live for some years yet.

                              

Last night I lay awake most of the night, knowing something... she was taken to the hospital by ambulance at 3am. My mother is dying. She had a stroke, a mild heart attack and has pneumonia. Without a 'living will,' she will be resuscitated if she stops breathing. Her dying could take a long time, as my father's did in ICU in a high tech hospital. But, essentially, she is gone. She'll never go home again. I feel very strange, though she is 89 and very thin and frail and we've known it could happen at any time. If I'm absent... it's because... thank you so much for your kindnesses, understanding.