This is the latest of the self portraits. It's a flashback. It should have been done before the last one with the huge gash in my forehead. But like all things in life, events don't happen to you in a linear fashion. Shit happens. So this was done as a flashback. The gash first and then the reason why. Life works by it's own rules. We can only keep up with the changing rules like a little child playing Monopoly with an older bully kid who keeps winning because he changes the rules every ten minutes. That is what we all are... the little child getting played. The name I gave this painting is the first line of a poem by William Blake titled The Divine Image from Songs of Innocence and Experience. Every artist worth his salt has had a dialogue with Blake. My dialogue is mostly the imagery I get from his words. Blake writes in ways that can only be explained by simply declaring that his work is some sort of generous, mystical gift from God/divine power. The Divine Image points out that we all ask for help in times of distress, to the world at large, and to God. We are reminded in this poem that we are all the same in these difficult times, no matter what our beliefs or situations are. This first line, "To mercy, pity, peace and love" is the most beautiful I think, to describe our longing for relief. If relief is to come, it is to come from the Divine *and* from us. The two are collaborators when it comes to rescuing the one praying. It takes both God and man for Blake. And it is this simple premise of our relief coming to us, from us, that gives the power. My painting is just a reminder to myself that this important truth applies to me as well. Sometimes we need that gentle tap on the shoulder from our own hand that we can indeed beat that bully kid in Monopoly.
Yes, I'm back. Its been almost five years since I have written here. And in five years wars can begin and end, great works of literature can be born, countries can be established. Well, to be clear, I cannot say that anything of that level has happened in my life but I can say with absolute certainty that the plates in the earth under my feet shifted. I walked down the path that was well worn and completely recognizable as the road to "home" and one day two years ago that path vanished. So "home" began to be an abstract thought and not a place anymore. A reality sea change. This period I am now finally out of, that began in earnest two years ago left me with a cognative dissonance that left little energy for my work. So my output has been just 3 paintings in this period. Some painters in history take these blows from life and use them like a well worn brush or a new color or material to make a wonderful work from. I could not. I did these three paintings and came up for air each time. 'Ce N'est Pas Du Sang' above is the latest. It looks the most brutal and yet it is my most hopeful. I could never have painted this in the middle of the battle. In the midst of heartbreak. Never. This painting is like my new dawn of the heart. It is my talisman of strength. I used an homage to Magritte as the title because it's important to distinguish between art and life. And for me, between images and reality, honesty and a lie. That was my new path replacing the now vanished one. I'm still building my new "home" and I am using the Endless House blueprint from our beloved family friend Frederick Kiesler... "All ends meet in the "Endless" as they meet in life. Life's rhythms are cyclical. All ends of living meet during twenty-four hours, during a week, a lifetime. They touch one another with the kiss of time. They shake hands, stay, say goodbye, return through the same or other doors, come and go through multi-links, secretive or obvious, or through the whims of memory." When I sat on Kiesler's frail but strong legs as a child I listened to dear Frederick with the attention of a wide eye little girl in love. Nothing short of a miracle to have come to find that the blueprint to my new life was within my memory the whole time. There is nothing like being born into the right family. Nothing. My home never left. It has been there the entire time. Waiting.
