“La salute non analizza se stessa e neppur si guarda nello specchio. Solo noi malati sappiamo qualche cosa di noi stessi.”
―
Paintings and Sketches
Speech, A Watercolour
“My speech is imperfect. Not because I want to shine with words, but out of the impossibility of finding those words, I speak in images. With nothing else to express the words from the depths.” ―
Her Life, A Watercolour
“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”
– D.H. Lawrence
Womanhood, A Watercolour
“It is always painful to set one’s self against tradition, especially against the conventions & prejudices that hedge about womanhood.” ― Helen Keller
Of Course, A Watercolour
“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Look closely and you will see a heart.
This Valentines day, as I contemplate love, fear, risk and all that spring and winter brings me, l’ll take Mr. Saint-Exupéry’s advice and accept (stay open to) them all.
Terribly Understood, A Charcoal
Because with alarming accuracy
she’d been identifying patterns
I was unaware of—this tic, that
tendency, like the way I’ve mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt—
I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood.”
– Stephen Dunn
I love working with charcoals. Although I’ve been working more with acrylics and watercolors the last few years, charcoal is my very first love – it was the medium I found at age 12 or so and remains my favorite…like an old friend who understands me..
Faith, A Watercolor with Leonard Cohen
On three different occasions this week, with three different people, conversations led to thoughts on love, belonging, our past and what we keep from it, as well as the rational and irrational mind (the heart and the head that is.) After considering all the conversations combined and all the different opinions of those I’m close to, I decided that for me personally, it comes down simply to faith.
My own idea of faith doesn’t encompass religion either, and in fact I don’t believe in religion or the church and mostly organizations of any kind worry me. I do however, have a strong faith in humanity, in something greater than myself, in love and even in the irrational mind.
I had had the idea that I would write about the subject, but instead I sat and painted my depiction of faith, both in something greater, and something deeper than the rational mind might allow. The drawers of the chest represent all the little places and files we keep within our minds. Those places that challenge our faith.
Exceptionally Quiet, A Charcoal Sketch
“I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.
In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Lunar Moon Mood, A Painting and Poem with Robert Creeley
A Form of Women
by Robert Creeley
I have come far enough
from where I was not before
to have seen the things
looking in at me from through the open door
and have walked tonight
by myself
to see the moonlight
and see it as trees
and shapes more fearful
because I feared
what I did not know
but have wanted to know.
My face is my own, I thought.
But you have seen it
turn into a thousand years.
I watched you cry.
I could not touch you.
I wanted very much to
touch you
but could not.
If it is dark
when this is given to you,
have care for its content
when the moon shines.
My face is my own.
My hands are my own.
My mouth is my own
but I am not.
Moon, moon,
when you leave me alone
all the darkness is
an utter blackness,
a pit of fear,
a stench,
hands unreasonable
never to touch.
But I love you.
Do you love me.
What to say
when you see me.
Still, A Watercolor with Pablo Neruda
“Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.”
– Pablo Neruda
Imperfect, A Painting
“We worship perfection because we can’t have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
While an art student many years ago my professor told me that none of my pieces were ever quite finished. That if I wanted them to be perfect, I’d have to finish them. I would explain that I was indeed “finished” and had no more to give to the piece, much to his frustration and dismay. On the occasion that I would return to a piece and try to make it “perfect” for him I would end up disliking it. Although there are some paintings that I take months to work on and continue to go back to, it isn’t to make them “perfect” – on the contrary, it’s just because I’m not done and still have something to contribute to it that is quite real. I have considered that I am simply not a perfectionist, although maybe I just find beauty in the imperfect things.
Dreams, A Painting
“I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.”
– Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Charcoal #14
Art is not alone in imparting charm and mystery to the most insignificant things; pain is endowed with the same power to bring them into intimate relation with ourselves.”
– Marcel Proust
I’ve spent so much time painting this last year that I’ve neglected to practice what I love best – the quick charcoal sketches. I give myself only five minutes. Out of all of the pieces I create, I always look most fondly at the quick charcoals. I believe it’s due to my disdain for and general lack of detail. Throughout the years, I’ve had to learn how to add detail to most anything I do. The beauty of these quick charcoal sketches is that no detail is needed – there’s no time for it. Essentially the quick sketch is “the big picture.”
Autumn, A Painting
Autumn is my favorite time of the year. Originally this painting was to be my representation of the Red-Light district in Frankfurt, Germany. Although for some odd reason it morphed into a painting of fall, or autumn, with all of the reds, yellows and browns – which I happened to finish on the first day of Spring. Odd..
“Zu keinem anderen Zeitpunkt (als Herbst) bewegt sich die Erde lassen sich eingeatmet werden in einem Geruch, der Reife Erde; in der Geruch ist in keiner Weise eine Verschlechterung an den Geruch des Meeres, bitter wo grenzt es an Geschmack und vieles mehr süss wie Honig, wo sie das Gefühl haben, dass sie den ersten Tönen. Mit Tiefe in sich, Dunkelheit, etwas von der schweren fast.”
“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Janus, A Painting
“Sensual and spiritual are not easy words to use; that there are, perhaps, not two
Aphrodites, but one Aphrodite with a Janus face.”
– E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey
I am preparing for my first one-woman art exhibit in June at a local gallery. This particular watercolor painting is rather large in size for me, but was always one of my favorite little sketches. I tend to paint and draw sensuality as exhibited here in “Janus.” With this show preparation comes an opening of insecurities, moods of every shade and a sweet time of self-reflection.
Grace, A Charcoal
“The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the Music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonised the whole —
And, oh! That eye was in itself a Soul!”
– George Gordon Byron
I have very few regrets in life, although I have had many blunders. The one I do have is related to a purchase of all things. A purchase I put off, thinking I would return and find it still….
For a few years I would visit Rome every three or four months or so. I didn’t stay in the touristy places, but outside of them, in a neighborhood in which I often found myself lost – the only English speaker. Near this neighborhood (I wish I could remember the exact area name) there was a flea market. The gypsy’s and bric-a-brac vendors would sell their wears. Three times I visited the same antique booth and three times I coveted a large alabaster statue of The Three Graces. It was beautiful. The woman selling the piece wanted 120 Euros for it and I never had the funds to spare. All of my money was spent either on travel or on entertainment while I was there and even then, entertainment often consisted of low-budget stuff.
Each time I saw it I’d tell myself that it was overpriced and the next time I’d return to Rome, have the money, and maybe, just maybe, the woman would lower the price. The very last time I visited Rome over a year and a half ago my intuition told me to just buy the damn thing…although it would have taken all of my money for the week…so again I told myself, “Next time.”
There was never a next time as it turns out. I’ve come across many statues since then of the three graces, but none as lovely as the one in Rome. I’d like to think I’ll find it again someday, if not in Rome, then another flea market somewhere far away…
Vision, A Watercolor
“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”
– Salvador Dali
Sex, A Watercolor
“Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.”
– Hunter S Thompson
Woman Guest, A Watercolor Muse
“This being human is a guest house,
Every morning a new arrival….
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”
Rumi – The Guest House
Woman Dream, A Watercolor
“Sometimes by a woodland stream he watched the water rush over the pebbled bed, its tiny modulations of bounce and flow. A woman’s body was like that. If you watched it carefully enough you could see how it moved to the rhythm of the world, the deep rhythm, the music below the music, the truth below the truth. He believed in this hidden truth the way other men believed in God or love, believed that truth was in fact always hidden, that the apparent, the overt, was invariably a kind of lie.”
– Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence
Man, A Charcoal
“Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?’
The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.
‘Oh, my dear, it’s rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he’s in love with you.’
‘Didn’t you mean them?’
At the moment.”
-W.Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
Anonymous, A Sketch
“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”
– Virginia Woolf
Blue, A Watercolor
“Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”
― D.H. Lawrence
Watercolor and The Path of Most Resistance
It seems as though the path of most resistance, although difficult, has gifted me with a world of color.
Ode to Daphne/Mythology, graphite sketch
“I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of all things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a sacrifice on their alters.”
― Ayn Rand
Arches and Walls, Oh My
While taking a break from writing today I sat at a bench and sketched what I saw instead of just snapping a photo… Here is a piece of my sketchbook.
Ode to Beatrice
“The beautiful lady opened wide her arms,
Embraced my head, and plunged me underneath,
Where I was forced to swallow of the water.”
– Purg. XXXI, Dante Alighieri
La Bellezza Ha Una Verità Tutta Sua
Here I’ve decided to share another of my drawings/sketches. Although the figures I draw may or may not be me, they all contain me…
Beauty has a truth all its own.
La bellezza ha una verita tutta sua
One Street Shy 