inside the square of an acute angle

inside the square of acute angle
where father’s towered like stubborn cupboard
a rubbish like a broken pencil-holder
knocked down unintentionally off his desk
may have resulted in reproach
beneficial to his daughter’s future 
where now she has finally arrived

she splits the fiber of the pencil-holder crack 
examining it to the light from narrow window
at the desk next to the sofa 
by the wall acutely angled to the jamb 
that blocks the cupboard
towering behind crack-opened door 
out of the therapist’s office

 

This is painting in progress. When I work, I don’t think of meaning. Art has no meaning. Meaning is a curtain that blocks inexplicable.  Art is behind the curtain. Does it make any sense? I really crave for you, my audience, to bear no witness to any meaning pertaining the painting in progress I am presenting to you in this display. It would be especially dear to me since the culprit of presented painting is my own father captured in the old photo before I’ve even known him. I beg you to dismeaning it all! Witness art, will you?

papa

In this photo he is young, twenty maybe. I met him later. By then papa changed glasses to more fashionable style in rectangular frames of pale horn. The black wheels in the old photo brought unfamiliar element to his familiar features disturbing in my early childhood, as an inkling that they used to live here before, in the realm unreachable to my memory.

I became aware of the boundaries of my personal memory in the summer of 1960. My family was getting ready for vacation at the place “...where we were last summer…” “Mama, I don’t remember going there last summer!” “It’s because you didn’t go, my dear.” “Where was I?” “You stayed in the village with grandma; you were too young to travel.” “Did Serezha travel?” “Yes.” “But I don’t remember the summer without Serezha!” “But you were too young to remember! You weren’t even talking, yet.”

What a revelation! There was time in my life that I didn’t remember!

For many nights to come I tried to extend my memory beyond the threshold.  The limitations faced on those nights were devastating. Later I learned that people customary put  language labels like god or otherwise what-have-you notions to help to feel ok about limitations. But even though the scare of where I was before birth remained more persisting than the uncertainty of where I go after death.

my brother and I

I am three in this picture; the human being next to me is my brother, Sergey.We were born three years and 24 hours apart; first him, then me. Serezha we called him, and this name was the best sound for my ears. How much I loved him! I wanted to be a boy, like him. Boys were better than girls, because Serezha was a boy. Marriage was a mystery, but if I could have married my brother it would had made more sense to me, except it was unnecessary because we were always together. What a happy girl I was to wake up every morning to his companionship and to fall asleep every night in the same room with him! My happiness lasted for twelve years. After that is was harder and harder to keep up with him, to the point that I lost him entirely. By my thirty we had nothing left to talk about. I certainly made mistakes too, but I never regretted, just went on living, so that by the time he had actually died of aneurism at the age of 59, I hardly felt any difference. I kissed his cold forehead and felt sad, but wanted to feel sadder for the loss of my brother, for the loss of my childhood, for the loss of the clarity and the pure joy of a childhood play! How easy I let go of my brother! I still cannot understand what happens to children when they grow up. Life is a mystery, don't you agree?    

a river trolley

Last night I dreamed that I was painting this painting again, but paining it was not enough, because there had to be an idea. The idea of the painting in my dream was rusty and urine-like. The lines were made with amber-clear urine, and the subjects were painted with the dry rusty paint. It was so meaningful and beautiful that I woke up happy. Today I am just too tired. I am curios though. I want to paint this old photograph again.
What does it mean, rust and urine? All solid bodies were rusty and the boundaries between them leaky like urine... and the water in the Moskvareka was cloudy like unhealthy urine, and flew by like life- right?- and we, the subjects of this painting, thinking ourselves solid, in fact were formed of fragments of powdery rust ready to fall apart, and the only thing that held us together was our own bodily liquid that also united us. 
This painting belongs to The Old Photos series. My brother is looking ahead and I am sitting on my father's lap. Much later, in the "real life" my brother would be carried away from us with the cloudy waters of life. Three years ago he had died and was berried on the high bank of Moskvaraeka in some overpopulated fast growing cemetery.
In the sixties, when we were kids in Moscow, the ferries on Moskvareka were called "river trolleys." 

no man ever steps twice in the same river

This picture captures their visit to Avtozavodskaya, the place in Moscow her family has moved out from two years before for better living conditions. For Lena two years is one fourth of her life and walking on familiar bank of the Moskva-reka makes her feel that no man ever steps twice in the same river. Dressy coat awkwardly fits small shoulders used to her brother’s hand-me-downs. Papa asks to hold an autumn maple leaf for the picture, making her shyness spike at the responsibility. She candidly attempts to smile…

the myths

...and if life consists of myths, let this be one of them, the myth of ultimate love. My childhood, my mother; just tell me how a weak woman could have cast such a powerful spell on me as my mother has done, and I am not an easy prey, I'm telling you. I have been going rounds about it my whole life. She is a genius, she is the only one. No matter what "reality" is, no matter the science of psychology, I refuse to believe that crap; I believe only in her, in the truth of the Never Land, an eternal childhood, for that what she has been for me, never mind the rest of our lives, the "reality" that dawned on all of us later including my brother's death... who cares, for my mother has been able to provide that fairytale of a childhood that no one besides us have known. There is no a greater artist in this world than my mother, Zoya Drozdova born Vlasova, and I am writing these words while she is still alive!   

Baltic Breach

Baltic Beach, acrylic, Mylar 32x24 is my second painting based on the old black and white pictures I brought back from my trip to Moscow. Let's call it a series now. The Old Photos series. What do I want to achieve? Definitely not the realistic affect of an old black and white photo. To me it is a trip to the past, some of which I may not even remember. In this picture my brother, mother and I are walking along the Baltic beach. My father is taking this photo. It was such a happy time for all of us! I must be ten or eleven there; Serezha thirteen or fourteen. My mother was the prettiest woman at the beach, never self-conscious of it, consumed with her children and husband. It was the time of  harmony. I want to do another take on this shot. I am interested in showing how at that moment both mother and brother are looking at me. I always liked sharing my thoughts with the others. They seem to be really interested....   

Old Photos: my mother and her astray father

On the right is my mother. There has never been a human being more beautiful than her. It has been true for when I have been a child and remains so to this day. My Mother, Zoya Matveevna Vlasova, is the most beautiful human being on this planet. On the left of this 'old photo painting' (Acrylic, Mylar 21x32) is her father, Matvey, who evacuated with his factory in 1941 leaving behind his wife, my grandmother, and 11 y.o. Zoya, to the city panicking over advancing Nazi army.  His daughter from another marriage is in the middle. Her name escapes my memory. I've never met my biological grandfather, but still remember the awkward visit many years later of my mom's half-sister...