seven in retrospect

Seven paintings in retrospect, acrylic on Mylar 36x48 - 34x48, 2014-2015

In the span of eighteen months, the Husband&Wife Sleeping images have been entering the Cave in the habit of dreams budding in vague formations and crystallizing in unaltered consciousness with the certainty of zodiac constellations. Number seven seems incomplete then but nothing can be done any more since she has awaken already unless she falls asleep again, which is highly improbable. 

We are all waiting for the new series now. It may be coming soon. 

 

whose dreams

I started this painting one day: it shaped itself in the first 40 minutes, I think, and then I felt weak, couldn't continue, left. Leaving the Cave is surfacing to the everyday life. I did just that. I returned to the painting a week later but couldn't finish it again. Distracted. It took another two weeks to gather courage to descend to the Cave and finish.
The wife has awaken in those three weeks. She realized that images, the property of the dreams, without words, the property of the conscious state, will be forever berried in the Cave. There is no more powerful weapon than the imageword, said the awakened wife. That was her revelation.

but i am trying

It has become so difficult to get down to the Cave!  A hermit in me gets weakened over the weekend. Not to use it as an excuse, but I got migraines in the morning. It takes an hour under the shower to cool the burn in hot hallucinating brain … Too much painting brings too much pain.  Stay away from raping the muse! Who breaks the law gets punished. My hermit and the muse are deep inside the Cave and I am too late to join them, but trying. You see, I’m trying!

mother laughing, a negative

When I look at an old photo I think of how different the formation of an image by photo-chemical processes of traditional photography is compare to digital. In traditional photography an image in the form of a negative is captured on film by photo-chemical reaction, then developed into a positive print through another chemical reaction. In digital photography, which shouldn't even be called photography --should it? --an image in the form of pixels is programmed to appear in a screen.  What does it even mean, a pixel? Information coded? Isn't an image we see as reality in fact an information we receive through chemical processes in our eye then decoded in the mind? So, film photography to an eye is what digital is to a brain.
I am an artist. An eye? A brain? No-no, I don't want to be dismembered this way! I wan to be whole.   
Looking again at the old photo of my  mother laughing, I try to reconstruct the negative. I play with my eye, I play with my mind, and my emotions. O, don't forget hands; they are always in motion! Tonight I don't have time to document the process. Too bad; at some point the painting looks really great except for some irritating flow below the corner of the mouth, which I try to eliminate and end up repainting the whole thing in the rush now.  It's feeding time already and Mark is calling me impatiently. Tuna steaks for dinner. He grills.
How to paint an old photo?  Each of my paintings so far is pointing out at different aims. I have to think. What is the painting of a negative about? Something our nowadays technology done away with? Something obsolete? Then I value it. Maybe again, it is something, which on order to comprehend, I have to twist in my mind?

acrylic on mylar

Mylar is a printing material. Makes it easy to imitate b&w photography. Finally I decided that I want just that, just an imitation. I search inside and find no poetry but imitation. After all, I come to conclusion that if I only can describe my experiences... I realize that I have to learn to communicate with myself more clearly. Strange, but I lost this ability. Could it be the change of language? 
Anyway, here is my mother, the way I know her young, her liquid laughter and her flooding nature.

more of my mother's laughing and me

Sometimes I paint out of fear to disappear.

The process, the end result,  the hope for recognition gives me hope. 

I worked so long at this painting my mother laughing that I killed it. 

Looking back, there was the stage when the as a portrait and as a painting it was better,

 

but didn't stop. It felt undercooked... Well, now it's overcooked.

With that in mind I start another painting.

 

Here my mother as the individual vanishes, but image seems cleverer to me, more universal, less personal. In other words, I like it better.

 

 Apparently, I don’t like to be personal; as a personality I strive to adhere to cultural icons, which almost means that I as an individual want to disappear. 

  

It defeats the logic.

 I use thick earthy colors

Here I am back to recognizable image.

 

I finished, and feel drained.I don't know it it's good or bad. Whose job is it to tell me? Father's, husbands, shrink's? I don't find an answer in myself. I know, it's the school that's missing...

mother laughing progress

First I flip through old photos. It fills me with emotions. I choose one to use it in my painting. It is the one that at this particular moment I am most emotionally attuned to. I try to examine its visual qualities but get confused between the primary and the secondary features. I try to figure out what is the main theme and quickly get dizzy. I take a breath and descend into the Cave. There, with the dummy of Like Totally sitting in the corner, I let go of any thoughts. I paint blindly. Camera becomes handy because it allows me to look at the process later, and hopefully analyze my painting, and hopefully understand what is the main theme and primary and secondary features to do a bit better next time. It takes a lot of effort to overcome the strength of the 'muse's' muscle to do it 'my way.' I can't stop thinking that the 'muse' of the Cave is my old fashioned father, an amateur artist himself, and 'my way' is the influence of my husband, a professional artist. This is in a way a disturbing thought, the one my analyst wouldn't approve of.
(what the f*ck, right? who cares, right?) 
P.S. As I am analyzing the process now, I see how I can strengthen the effect. But yesterday, when I was looking at the same sequence right after I washed my brushes, I felt differently. See, it can be taken in any direction. Why should it be taken anywhere, anyway?
Because when one will in me fights another will in me, it feels like an effort.    

mother laughing

My mother’s laughter had an inexplicable effect of changing all. 

Her mouth spreading beyond her face surged everything like liquid dissolving boundaries. 

The torrent of pleasure wave destroyed restrictive matter in one gulp

and swirled, and flipped, and tossed it like sparkly bobbles of high tide.