The first time M____ came over she brought her boyfriend. The young woman whose photograph I was emailed, was of fair but almost bruised complexion, a sign of depression. She had an energy, a fire and a flame burned from the back of her head, and out in front of her, something she was walking towards, some light that she saw to guide her out of some very dark place.
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M____ comes over. It is daylight, how much younger and sweeter she seems at night. She confesses she is crazy, first week of the new term at P____, . . . she’s very agitated. Yet she seems to want to strip and lie down and relax as my brush goes all around her. . . not sexual at all . . . it goes where it must, the work. I chose a big brush, load it up with dark ink, and make a pattern drawing, with about six positions. It has mass and power.
Then I decide to make it wet. I load up the pot with a witches brew of black ink. 'M____ we’re going to do it quickly, very quickly all around and I want you to change poses quickly, from one to the other, and we will see what comes.'
'Please use red, Please use red!" M____ asked me to use some color, so I did.
The drawing ends up as a murky mess, with a pile of red in it – after we switched colors. Giggling she goes into the shower to wash off.
Is red, the color of energy, beginning to transform her pathways?
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I've had this dawing in the studio for nearly a month, have looked at it many times, yet only when photographed did I realize that, like the earlier one, M____'s hands and feet are poking out of a giant tangle, like she's trapped in some eternal barbed wire.
Her hands shoot skyward out of the mess of red and black.
She's working through nerves that are turned back on themselves, insisting on the straight route of light, . . up!
