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"Pi"
is a work of pure play and conjuring. The subject (here a memory)
is evoked and responded to (as if a substitute for). The memory
is of a romance; a man who built a post and lintel construction-out
of stones found in a meadow which of course looks like the symbol
Pi. Whether architectural or mathematical the Pi is a forceful imagery.
The painting consists of 4 elements or symbols. There is the Pi
(rottenhel red), two circles; one a moon, the other a composite
of two into one "flesh" (only a hyphen - separating the
two) thinly painted and running down the dark green surface and
background and the fourth an X of consciousness, the existential
symbol. The "X" is scratched into the green and the moon
is likewise scratched out. The poem that accompanies this work from
"Painting Manual" reads in part:
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"Pi"
oil 12" x 22" 1976 |
Form
separated (caught between) one slash - an oval opening where light
oozed from stone and melted into the dark green earth
like wine, like blood, like an old woman snoring... dreaming about
diameter, circumference, and other weighty matters windows in
the earth. |
| So
the lovers- two in one- are separated and caught between the
slash/hyphen and melted like wine or blood....or windows in
the earth, which would be stone graves. The artist fell asleep...and
snored. That’s what this painting is about...and the romance
ended. Art must be about something. |
In
"Trading Seats" the
memory is about having a pet put to sleep. The artist looked
into the dog's eyes and saw him die. In the work a woman is
sitting on a purple slab of paint. She is wearing a pink body
suit and has two antennae. Her expression is shame and hurt.
In her abstracted arms and hands is the dog's nose and the
"dog" itself is a universe of squiggles and things
on a larger slab of red paint. Another evocative (maybe invocative)
painting is "Sky Speaking Light". Here the artist
paints from a subject (the setting sun) until quite "high".
She decides to wash the paint off to reuse the canvas later
and as she does suddenly the ephemeral substance appears,
which she then preserves, and is moved by the accident and
emboldened asks a question and literally hallucinates an answer...the
prisms in the painting.
"Trading
Seats" oil 26" x 26" 1976
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"Sky Speaking
Light" oil 28" x 36" 1976
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| Sky
Speaking Light
Something "too bright to see"
I'd been thinking,
brush in hand - sunset arrives (all else has gone quite static)
I reach and bow, I paint in step; this sudden sky assignment.
The colors open, shift, combine
I dance to the upper airs caprice and
loose myself and time and sound and many brushstrokes later
I awaken in the dark, cloud like, rapt
and mouth the word "Beloved".
The neon tube sputters - ON- its bluish nervous noises
I look now at the canvas - cooled-
OK, but nothing special
And decide to wash it down feeling ...sheepish, humbled...
trying to paint the sky!
I slosh the turp around as gradually ITappears -
The sunset, DISAPPEARING, the meaning of a MOMENT
I hurry home, stomach almost queasy...otherwise unsettled,
and just how should I finish this piece
to which I now belong?
something I asked crossed over
the barriers all fell down
and caving in, a prism of light struck upon the canvas
The curtains I made unguentine, a royal suave
to sooth this flood and wound which held...
Sky was speaking light.
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"Ophelia's Pink" oil 79" x 100" 1976
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| Ophelia's
Pink
Shattered shards, fragments of flowers,
flesh bits dissembled
all yearning earnestly or at least wanting, needing to grasp.
I endeavored to fit this high-fettled fire for truth and deliverance
stepping back for perspective, tripped on thick shackles,
shackles of sand.
Hearth burned pink, furnace glowed crimson.
Confounded, gone "Nonnie"
abashed with addition,
and heat once begun runs its course.
Burned twice in the same fire and still raging blind,
cotton candy cyclone, tempest of pearl
and petals and drown there.
"Forgive me,"
Unhinged and perfected; completely undone
breath plover and pink...
so greenly the rain.
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In "Ophelia's Pink"(1976),
the theme was of course the myth of Ophelia, and the method was
organic abstraction. When painting very large paintings the artist
must relate to the work with their whole body. There is not exactly
a gestalt involved unless it is the flying form in the top left
and the bit of blue "pond" interlaced with "leaves"
at the bottom, but this was a thoroughly modern painting in the
sense of compression. |
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