Fragments of Healing

where I am, the edge of oblivion

blank, empty stare

you carry it in the palm of your hand

delicate music-maker, this filler of hours

without art, I couldn't imagine living

blank, empty stare,
its simmering anger boiling at the edges

that I see on your face
I know the edge

come back to those who love you,
love

Almost Finished Painting

(28.5"x20.5"; 72.5cmx52cm; oil & watercolour on Waterford paper, click here for larger size & press F11 for full screen)


The women on the right appeared ghostly from a distance.

The greens of Nature and the poppies and marigolds much stronger.

She wondered if that was a statement.

The ocean has turned into green.

She had to put the water back in for depth.

Otherwise she'd be flooded.

Where was he anyhow?

Why were the women always waiting.

They were naked and waiting.

Even she who was born from a seabrush
of sea foam.

Paiting Still in Process, nearing end though...

awake in night, sleep soon, hope, embroiled by my painting, get overalls on, go at it again

complexity of colours & figures driving me nuts. ready to throw it out. obsession. unscrew tubes of oil paint, try this, that. mess of reality.

where painting has progressed to, or regressed to.

(click here for larger size, you might need to press F11 if you'd like to see its whole cacophony)

Mirror of Venus

I am the mirror that I watch my
self in.

Behind the mirror is where I see.

Only ask for the 'freedom to revolt- psychic,
analytic, artistic- a permanent state of questioning,
of transformations, an endless probing of appearances,'
......found on the dustjacket
......of a book by Kristeva,
who wrote about revolt, and love.

Everyone should love wholly once in their life, as
the daughter of fortune knows.

The tenor of love demands it.

Love, illicit, a revolt against the order
of the rest of it.

The amatory moment is poetry, open-ended,
without a story to guide it, what's behind the mirror
where I watch your face.

Venus, Goddess of Love, married to Hephaestus, master craftsman.

Of course love is wedded to art. How else
could it be?

The block was a red clay-baked brick which took two hours to smash. It revealed
itself, heavy, smoldering with beaten passion, betrayals and intrigues, over my heart. Cracks of light appeared that became white-red lava that disintegrated slowly the faster I danced.

When I melted into the mirror, love flowed freely.

Venus, Goddess of Love, but she knew her Ares, Mars, God of Fire and War.

Venus undid her bodice and melted
into his arms.

Illicit. Love.

Sometimes I prefer the quietness
of my own thoughts.

Remembered

Is my art confident? Intensely meditated? Is how deeply I love what will be remembered about me?

Strange questions Lightbrown brings to his biography of Botticelli, who was only remembered by Vasari's Lives of the Artists in what was otherwise five centuries of obscurity.

How odd that it was his paganism which appealed to the fin de siècle who brought his work from the shadows of history.

The barest outline of a life.

Botticelli is his art.

A Love Affair hits #2 on the Charts

A Love Affair #2 in SoundClick's Poetry Charts?! You guys!!! Thanks. 16 min of too-rich poetry, no music, & a Summer weekend? Blow me away...

(Go here to read the poems, which I pasted into a comment.)

(Yes, I am a little out of place at SoundClick's Poetry section, but I've been posting there for a few years, before they even had a Talk/Poetry section, and it's where I keep my poetry recordings: Aural Pleasure.)

Painting In Process July 08

Clipped 2 clamp lamps each with 100Watt daylight spectrum bulbs on either side and snapped it. Blue is a bit bright, slightly darker in the original. The lower right quadrant a little darker than in the painting, but running the Dodge tool in Photoshop over it even at 25% didn't bring it to its shade of colour. Every monitor's different anyhow. My old iMac & new Dell laptop each present colours differently. Overall, and I worked on this awhile, between the 2 computers, the coloration's not bad.

Anyway, how's that drawing I posted going? Eh. Tinkering, dabbing, letting it grow in its own fashion. Slow, but I'm enjoying slow. My paintings used to be done in 20 minutes and that felt fine then only now I want to linger longer, enjoy the process continuously. A dab, a little bit of paint, wait a day, see what's next. This piece, however, who knows, it seems quite complex to me as I work on it, and I don't know in which direction it'll develop.

I just spread the blue of her back into the other blue to syncopate the rhythm across the page better because alone it overwhelmed, was too strong. I started using watercolour pencils because they're more forgiving, and I can test the colours first.

Do I like it? I'm not sure. It's growing on me. It seems diagrammatic. A blueprint. Though of what, I cannot quite say. Groupings, images of women.

72.5cm x 52cm/28.5" x 20.5", oil and watercolour on paper (click image for larger size) or go directly here (you might need to press F11 to see it all).