Self Portrait #10 - Dancing Selves, Version 2

I'm trying to remember how long it takes for me to 'come round' to a painting - they're always such a shock when they're first done. Even things we create we have to get used to as they grow on us.

I'll fiddle with it for a few hours, then go to the library to pick up some books that have come in, and perhaps buy another canvas. Usually I trace the drawing, just in case I'm not happy with the painting, and I didn't this time because the large roll of parchment paper is in the back of the closet under the stairs, behind the small kitchen cupboard with the hot plate on it, and behind the iMac box, and it's a determined effort to get anything out of there. The canvas board seems to work, it's fairly dry this morning, and no buckling, but if I try again that means re-drawing the image, oh groan.

The colours are darker than they are in real life. I had hoped the way Flikr and Blogger lighten everything would compensate for it; but, no, and I didn't see this until it was uploaded. Flikr's free accounts have a 20MG limit each month, and I'm already at 28% of that. There'll be more posts of this painting later too.

When I look at it, I see wailing almost - that there's some storm or tempest. Or is that just my tired eyes? I was up till 3am and then woken at 9am by the thunderous noise of young children running and shouting just above my head. It's a good thing I love children, eh!

Self Portrait #10 - Dancing Selves

I would say this is my least successful so far. It's still wet, and this is only the first layer of paint. But I wanted it to be done, and of course it isn't. We'll see how I can "fix it up" tomorrow.

Almost there... Updated below, a sketch now...

One more day and then Sparky's Self-Portrait Marathon is over, and what a month it's been! As I'd been planning, I took some photos of "dancing." But seem unable, so far, to use them as inspiration for a painting. I stare at the blank canvas, this time larger, 22" x 28", draw some lines, erase. I know that the paint won't be dry enough by tomorrow to 'finish' anything that might happen today, and so then I consider entering the last set of 'dancing photos' and letting it go at that.

Only one of the reasons I started blogging was to deal with an incessant writer's block, and painter's block. It's been the most terrific remedy, too.

So paint I must.

It made me laugh, but someone said that my 'self portrait' photographs were way better than my paintings!

Now, don't ya know, the lawd made cameras to free up artists from havin' to represent the world representationally. Oh, they can do it if they want, but they don't have to no more!

But it's having an effect, all this honesty. People still prefer what "looks like" to an interpretation that becomes another kind of "looking like..." And how I've wished I could prop up a mirror where my workplace is and do one from life, but money went into paint, the latter seeming more of a priority.

In the midst of all this, naturally crisis arises, and the moving company threatens to auction or throw out my household goods because they discovered they can get three times what I'm paying for the space my items take up. So a new apartment search is on, reading classified ads till I can't see straight between paint brush strokes and blog reading. Just now PS-Storage has called to let me know the size storage I need is available and if a suitable apartment in this area doesn't emerge over the weekend, my brothers and son and I hopefully will be moving our stuff downtown. The storage is within walking distance; it'll be good to have access to my household again. All the books will have to come into this tiny basement apartment, though...

I look at the blank canvas, sigh, pick up a pencil... we'll see what, if anything, emerges.

Sometimes, it's just DIVE.

__________

Later, well, it is white canvas board, and I took the photo in direct sun, but the whites don't want to show.

Don't know how much of a self-portrait it'll be, in the traditional sense, but at least there's something to guide the paint now...

After meditating, and walking Keesha (my dog), more diving... see you later!

Celebrating the dancer, sort of...

These are not as well done as they could have been. I got into my favourite dance duds, ran upstairs when the house was quiet, set up a tripod, dashed and posed on the timer a few times, grabbed the tripod, and headed back downstairs to my underground abode. I could have asked, I guess, when my landlord was going to be out, but then I'd have to admit I was 'taking photos for a self portrait marathon' - and who wants to admit a thing like that? Okay, so they're blurry. Sorry. And the bookcase smack behind me, well, some clone stamping, and viola! Gone for all intents and purposes! Okay, so I had to blur the background over the vanished books with an impressionist brush, put a spotlight or so on each figure to make them visible... shucks, I'm only tryin'! I am posting these with the affirmation that I will make my final self portrait out of them by Saturday. In storage I have a large 8' x 5' mirror that I practice poetry/dance performance pieces before, dang if I can manifest one of those mirrors before the ending of the marathon - hence the camera. And I will write a prose poem too... (please tell me I'm silly, because really I am :).

Self Portrait #9

For Sparky's Self Portrait Marathon. Take a look at the slideshow of all the entries in the marathon, fabulous! This excessive gaze at the self is over at the end of the week. Doing these self portraits is excruciating.



The face is wider and rounder than mine- but I'm not aiming for a "photograph." I had difficulty uploading a photo with an accurate rendition of the colours and white in all the right places. I eventually photographed it in direct sun, the light of which is glancing off the paint.

7.75" x 10.25", oil on perhaps paper, perhaps canvas, I don't know, I bought a few rolls of it at Active Surplus awhile back.

Workspace

You can see the little card table, and the board on which the last self portrait is taped. Above it is our "dinner table," and about 3 feet away, where the camera is, is my futon couch/bed. The computer is inbetween, as well as an older Ikea leather chair. It's called cram-it-in in the most minimalist way possible. I know it's hard to imagine, but cozy is the word for it. Two can fit in here if we stay seated; three, and it's over-crowded... :)

Paper Wings

This poem's joined The Festival of the Trees 1 --- swing over, hyperlink-like, and read Dave's great inaugural celebration on all the terrific posts submitted. Every month there'll be a blog post by one of the rotating editors :) devoted to collecting all the posts submitted that month on trees. Tree worship is alive and well and thriving!
Paper Wings


I open 500 envelopes a day: transactions, records, letters. Slice them open like pockets, remove sheaths of paper.

Paper cuts, edges like swords.

The first paper was stone. Scrawling on cave walls, then wet clay tablets, wax-coated inscribed by metal, bone, ivory stylus. Papyrus, sheepskin, parchment.

Unfold letters, staple, sort, deliver it to the offices.

Papering the world. It burns. Flames of culture singe.

From pictures to pictographs to abstract figures to alphabets, our grammars of sound ground into ink of soot, glue and water scratched with reeds, or quills, taking the five outer wing feathers of geese, swans, crows, owls, turkeys, hawks.

As body is to breath,
paper and ink are to mind.

Without papyrus, animal skin, parchment, vellum or the plant fibre, cellulose mulch of pressed paper... our history.

The body of language is inked paper.

The Gutenberg Printing Press, replaceable wooden letters. 1436. Cursive handwriting, 1495, Manutius of Venice, the 'running hand.'

Our 26 alphabet letters not till the end of the 16th century.

Mass printing. Mass distribution. Wide scale literacy.

The first paper was stone. You drew on the cave walls.

The world is papered with knowledge. Burn all the paper in the stoneage firepit of our souls.

Smooth burning words under my fingers.

Forests are the lungs of the planet; and wood dust and water promise of immortality.

Give us our words, records, songs, drawings, photographs, to store. Save diagrams of what houses us. Even Capitalism depends on the paper that money is printed on. Bank statements, loans, stock certificates. Cheques, vouchers, tickets. Medical, dental records. Taxes. All the transactions.

Delible records kept in the vaults of time. Mementos.

Ownership tattooed in the ink on the paper that becomes passport of proof.

Birth and baptism and education and marriage and employment and travel and retirement and death certificates.

The paper trail of our lives.

Envelopes as wallpaper. Bodily fluids, tissue papers. Cards, wrapping, origami. Computer paper. Specially treated, bonded. Newspapers, boxes.

The world is awash with paper.
Inscribed paper.

Mind. Hand. Ink. Paper.
My letter opener flashes like a slicing knife.

Envelope after envelope, stack after stack of paper. Filing ourselves. Pixelated language printed out reams upon reams collected, stored.

I wander the stacks of the library afterwards, shelf upon shelf, floor upon floor of bound books of yellowed paper inscribed with words, figures, numbers, images.

This gift of trees,
memory of ourselves.

This love letter
of paper.

________
ah, sigh, I've been tinkering with this for months, it just keeps growing...