Shaman

'Shaman: Reflective Face,' 2009, 13"x16"; 33cmx41cm;
India inks, oil pastels, acrylic, varnish and dried leaves on archival paper

No idea why I keep working on it - wasn't my original idea or even close (which was some colorful decorative masks) and I don't know where he came from, or why painting his face is so difficile. Because I took him to DOWH yesterday for the alter, and the women said, 'oh he's a shaman!' he now has a new title. Shaman, he is.

(In my original conception one aspect I wished for was cat eyes, not quite but almost-sort-of, eyes that can see in the dark - how else is a shaman to get about in the obscure spirit worlds?)

                                                

How It Comes About

Sometimes it emerges as a gift, but mostly not. More like hewing sculpture out of marble with your fingers as your only tools.

Perhaps there are artists who laugh the whole time they work and who are satisfied with everything they do. While I am mostly 'in the zone,' concentrated, focused, busy doing and undoing, wrecking and saving, there is always a moment when I cry. Anguish. It might be before I begin. Or after I've ended. But usually during schisms during.

I'm in the flight or fight syndrome when I paint. I want to run from the image I am fighting to create. I only stop what surely is a sort of madness, painting, by deciding something is finished when I 'can live with it.' And yet my images clearly don't reflect the pain they have caused me.

People who don't create art don't perhaps understand what you go through as you wait for the moment when your painting, or your sculpture, or your composition sings to you.

Until it sings to you, you have to keep going or give up.

Lately I'm simply making, without being serious. I'm doing pieces that are not part of any project. Mostly I am aghast at what's emerged. It's better to have a direction, to know what it is you want to do. To have a thesis.

Yes, even in paint. A thesis is not a direction exactly. Not in the way I am using it. But an overall 'reason for being' perhaps.

Just doing for the sake of doing doesn't do anything.

Unless you make the 'doing for the sake of doing' the raison d'etre, that is!

                                                

Sheets

Harsh sheets
fall softly.
Leaves once, crack in November.
Shellac the face with stones,
I saw this:
a model whose head
pasted with small grey stones,
like you find
on any rocky pebble beach.

Sheets perhaps of rain,
or the ones you wash because
you sleep in them,
or what we write or draw on.

Sheets fall

my walls

falling, falling
like tears.

                                                

The Reflective Face

As masked women in the circle, we wear our secrets and our feathers. Bird-wing women. Masks represent ways we hide our feelings. We dance. Spontaneously a masked woman enters the circle, slowly or spinning or high stepping. At the moment of uncovering she removes her mask to reveal her reflective face. As woman after woman enters the spotlight of the centre of the circle dancing and strips her mask, we cheer. Vulnerable without what hides us, sweat, and crease, and laughter, we: flash glitter dancing glyphs; we: body poetry.





The Reflective Face, 2009, 13"x16"; 33cmx41cm;
India inks, oil pastels, acrylic & dried leaves on archival paper (on right, earlier version; on left, finished, with leaves dried nearly to veins, gloss, and more paint added -click on images to see larger versions)

I didn't like the finished painting, so have played with it in Photoshop. The original is varnished, very high gloss.

A poetic response to one of the exercises Erica Ross facilitated during her Dance Our Way Home session, 'Honouring Your Feelings,' the second session of the Nest & Nourishment series, last Saturday. She offers the same class each Wednesday evening.

I wished to write about the dance of the masked women and thought to paint a feather mask to illustrate this post. Because of the way the paper buckled with the wet paint, and the shape of the neck, I think it is a man angel. I call my masked man, or perhaps beneath the mystery of the mask, woman,  The Reflective Face.

NEST & NOURISHMENT

A woman's sanctuary in the heart of Toronto.

Location:Dovercourt House, 3rd floor