04/04/2005 - Battle of the Trees

The idea of letters – I’m seeing these women as letters in an alphabet,  “A” is for A___ P____, “B” is for B____ M____, "M" is for M___ S____, “R” is for R____K____,  "L___ L___" is for L_____ L______, aka R_B_G_, or Rainbow Girl, "P" is is for R_____ P____,  Somehow these women have become entwined in my own archetypal alphabet/tree imagery, something similar to what Graves was talking about in alphabet evolution, the myth of the Battle of Trees, the history of willow, alder, birch and oak, etc., and letters themselves.

04/21/2005 - 1st

M____,

you arrive with

your craziness

around your head

like a net

or a hat.

You have good manners -

you remove it,

when you arrive.

04/21/2005 - 2nd

Tonight M____ ,

you are so centered!!

Here you're doing,

your dance around,

your centered being.

04/21/2005 - 3rd

Here you are

taking the net

off your body,

dropping

the ghosts!

04/21/2005 - 4th

This is the fourth of four made this very special evening with M____.

This little waif of a creature, who talks of her insomnia and her madness, who has this loving charm about her.

The more she speaks of her madness, the more I realize she's sane and well.

Here you are as an icon to be loved and respected. Even worshipped.

05/09/2005 - Last work with M____ S_____

M____ came over on a Monday evening impatient to make some works with the wet brush. I had in the morning rolled out and stretched a large piece of Stratmore watercolor, and also tinted it a light yellow and pink.

The drawing made from the first piece from the roll - that's why it's rounded at the top - anyway I was ready, and M____ was crazy to do some big wet powerful works.

Using the big elk hair brush I put out the red lines, then the same brush to apply a brownish black. Then I opened up the tumeric that Ami had made up for me and I asked M____ where she thought I should put it. I told her that tumeric helps the body remove poisons and blockages, and helps it generate internal heat. She started saying things like, I feel cold here, and pointing to her neck, so I would then apply some tumeric to the neck area. Then she said she felt cold in the belly, so I put some there. The whole center of the body ended up smeared with tumeric. Then I opened up the coffee and made coffee stains around the whole body. M____ drinks a lot of coffee at school.

After M____ left I did some 'repair' work. This is when I reconstruct lines that got smeared or blotted out in order to make the work go faster. We're not always able to give it enough time to dry. I do this by standing next to the drawing as if I'm actually standing over M____ herself at that moment, and feeling the natural arcs that my arm can make, redoing the lines. It's almost as easy as tracing her body again as if she were there.  But as this act does depart from the unbiased unconcious discipline of making a tracing, and turns the look and the feel of the work over to a painterly energy which is somewhat subjective, I'm careful not to overdo.

Next time it will be back to lines, back to overlapping brown or sienna lines with the small brush.

04/15/2005 - M____

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.

I welcomed the two of them in. He was awkward, and acted like he was imposing, but after all they both wanted to know that my motivations were pure. He saw the work and took encouragement, and so he smiled and left her with me.

-:-

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?

-:-

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!

04/15/2005 - Desperate to Work

Second session with M_____ S_____.  She arrives, desperate to work. The clothes fall to the floor, she takes poses all over the paper.

M___ was feeling crazy . . it  had been the first day of spring term at Parsons. She's been anxious about her classes, friends . . everything.

I chose the big brush as a way of letting out her angst. She moved all over the page, upside down, back, behind. She seemed to be spelling out
something very dark.

I did my work, tried to hear what she was saying. Deep from a tangle of branches, out of a caged bundle of dark energy, her hands fly up.

A call for help.