She, transparent to the sun (finished)

'She, transparent to the sun,' 8.5" x 11", conte, chalk, pastel, art pen on Pentalic neutral pH 25% cotton 130 lb drawing paper.

This drawing is finished. The poem written into the drawing was recorded over a mix of sounds, with a slight theatrical flavour. Both the drawing and the poem refer to something specific. Do you see it?


direct link: She, transparent to the sun.

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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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Paint Thoughts

When other people paint, do you have
thoughts like:

It's GOT to pull you away

...but not too much.

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The real story of recording 'She, transparent to the sun'

Ok. Truth is this 'little' 1:33min recording took most of the day. I hit Record and said the short poem a few times and nothing was recorded but a blank line. Plugging and unplugging things, resets and upsets, hours went by as I struggled with my system made of old and newer components. Checking and re-checking System Preferences, everything always looks fine, even the Mac's internal microphone worked, but not dear old GarageBand. In increasingly dire frustration I deleted it. Deleted it! And then the Apple App store wanted to charge me $14.99 to re-buy it! Snarl and growl. I went and found iLife '11, hoping it was the latest version, and anyway, if it isn't Apple is usually decent enough to update if you've bought the product in recent history. Being by now thoroughly versed in the checking and re-checking of everything multiple times, I did open the App store again, and finally, under Purchases, there was my Garage Band, uninstalled, ready to install. So I didn't have to re-install iLife.

Did the re-install work? No. GarageBand has become the most finicky mistress, or, in my case, master. It certainly recognized my mic, but allow recording to occur through it? Not on your iLife.

I think in the process of clicking anything and everything I clicked Input over to the internal mic and viola, recording real sound. Then I clicked it back to my mic. And it worked!

No idea if it ever will again, or if I have to jump through X number of hoops before the software responds correctly.

Ok. So we got recording. I recited my little poem. Almost too fatigued to care about the quality emotion wrapped up in the tremor of voice. Perhaps too shrill; perhaps not contained enough. I don't like my voice, but few of us do. It's too high. I try to remember to speak more deeply. And so on and so forth as I recorded the scant minute and a half a few times.

I did choose a recording that wasn't too bad but the weird thing is that the sound was a bit 'tinny.' I had recorded the piece I read on open mic last sunday at Nik Beat's HOWL at Q Space in preparation for my performance and the sound had been crystal clear and very life-like. Try as I might, with moving the mic from desk to lap, tilted up, and down, the 'tinny' sound remained.

So finally I plugged in another mic that, look we're talking low end stuff here, but there are subtleties, is not as good as the mic that had become 'tinny' for no good reason.

It was getting dark. I had to take the dogs out. I hadn't eaten, neither had they. And I kept at it, tenaciously.

Yes, as I said yesterday, while I'm not fully satisfied with the final recording, IT WILL DO (take that, GarageBand!). And yes I spent some time finding tracks on freesound.org and mixing and re-mixing them. By the time I'd saved a version and uploaded and shared to Facebook and posted on my blog, it was 9pm, and when I took the dogs out the slush that had fallen all day was becoming lethal slippery icy under foot and I didn't have my cleats on and so we gingerly walked around the block, not enough of a walk for any of us, but we all came home nearly an hour later soaking wet, and even this morning their leashes and harnesses and dog coats are still damp.

Here's the recording again.

You'll forgive me for posting it twice.


  direct link: She, transparent to the sun (the title is taken from the quote from Legends of the Bible by Louis Ginzberg on Noah's birth, but also describes the painting, which became an integral part of the meaning).

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Little recording of, 'She, transparent to the sun'

Really I don't quite like the way I read this poem, but it's getting there (and SoundCloud may have done some uninvited ducking). It's the poem written into the drawing I posted earlier today. For the background, I mixed some tracks from freesound.org. See if you can guess the riddle in it.
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Drawing-in-progress: She, transparent to the sun

A test shot of the light drawing I did last night, and then wrote the poem I composed earlier in the day into it. Because the writing took more space, I'll have to extend that dark background to page edge, and see if I can sharpen the edges of her face (the conte is rough, awkward for fine lines). 'She, transparent to the sun,' 8.5" x 11", conte, chalk, pastel, art pen on Pentalic neutral pH 25% cotton 130 lb natural white drawing paper.

 ps. When I can take a better photo (we have a sleet storm right now, so no going out to get a daylight photo), or at least set up lights with some daylight coming from the window, I will also take a photo of the poem, which I wrote in my writing Moleskine, but first, on a quest for shrimp (which I have been craving for days and last night bought an over-priced prawn dish from an Indian restaurant that was mostly onions and green peppers in spices and very few split prawns, and it didn't hit the spot. Lol! :)

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Poets Series: At HOWL's February event

...my *untouched* drawing.

I had put my art supplies away, when Liz ripped off her top and proceeded to spread blood over her belly, neck, chin, her hands covered, an organ, viscera in one hand, so out charcoal and red chalk and paper came, and I drew as fast as I could. You don't get a sense of Liz's physical beauty here (she's a knockout), but perhaps some of the strangeness and deep power of her unexpected performance.

(It is taking discipline to refrain from spending an hour or two working on this drawing but I have other work that isn't getting done. So far, other than the dozen photos shot in daylight to find one approximating the original and the photoshopping to get it closer to the real image, I have managed to leave the original sketch as is. This drawing is testing that resolve though and greatly.)




I don't take reference photos but here is Nik Beat's photo of the incredible, disturbing, powerful, vulnerable, deeply emotional performance last night at HOWL Q Space by Liz Worth, a very talented Toronto poet.

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