Sex and the Artist

This is a rather funny, depending on how you look at it. A dear blogging friend, Bill, bought one of my watercolor pencil drawings:

Dance, the Dream, Disappearing Into Each Other, 8.5" x11", watercolour pencil on paper, 2006.

The writing along the blue woman's leg: 'shadow my desire'; up the older woman's arm, 'what rises into the self?'; and curling from thigh to breast to arm, 'repose curls in on itself.'

(click on it for larger sizes)

He wrote in a recent comment, "By the way, my Mother in law thinks my awful painting of those people having sex should be removed from our quest bedroom. I love it by the way and will post it framed soon."

Huh? I overlaid (uh oh, I'm noting my terminology) 3 sketches of the same model from the same lifedrawing class and then colored them so that they seem what I thought was melting into each other (uh oh, terminology again) like a dream, sort of surrealist. All I can see is the figure 8 of the composition, which I like and didn't notice until it was finished. But now that he mentions it...

A prime example of how the artist creates a work but doesn't thereby generate the meaning... (Wayne Booth's Rhetoric of Fiction, but don't ask me for a page reference, it's in storage! Booth says there is a gap between author and text, and between text and audience. I'll say!)

But perhaps unconsciously... (O, roll over Freud, roll over).

Bedroom in Seaton Village

The futon bed couch arrived, was constructed, laid with a sleeping bag and pillows...

Upon which I immediately sat and meditated and then napped. Not quite the Bedroom in Arles, but nice...

And even nicer to be off the sweating floor (a swamp, shhh). Austerities of sleeping on a foam mattress (nee sponge) on the floor gone. It feels positively luxurious. Emergency measures were called for. Beautiful Kobe design cover in flame colours ready in 2 weeks, and I’ll post it then.

Update: Perhaps I should dress it in velvets, as this filter suggests...

Woman in Green

She begins a new page on my website.

Floor Sweat

That obscure country north of the border...

"Canadians are healthier and have better access to health care than U.S. residents. And, according to a new study, Canadians obtain better care for half of what Americans spend on their medical system." CTV News

Not only that but, thanks largely to the Liberal Government under Chretien:

"The [Canadian] federal government has posted a whopping $12-billion budget surplus for the fiscal year that ended March 31 [2006]." Shaw News

Compare this to the U.S. Deficit of 8.4 trillion dollars. Methinks the US has to consider electing a president and a party who can put the economic stability of the country first, even risking electoral consequences to do it. And, Americans, do something about your national health care!

Hexagram of I & Thou

Vines

Crawl of vines
inside
the window.

How can you breathe
without air?

Fresh, profuse tendrils.

My fingernails,
green like Spring.

Celine, worms
with five hearts
fill the earth
create the soil
out of which we grow.

The spirits are watching.

My mouth fills with loam
thick, rich humus.

Do I seek
what is too deep
and far away
from sunlight?

Thin mantle of earth
that supports us.

Remove the screen
find pure green.

It was the vines
that undid everything.

I'll tell you what's sacred.
Not the gods out there.
This flare of life
in the shrine
of our bodies.