Some new mixed media paintings- and a bit about their meaning.

The first two small paintings were finished last weekend. I'm exploring new materials like layering tracing paper, gold paper, putty, and a variety of clear acrylic glosses and matte gesso to create texture and luminescence. The Gun Lady, the Baby, and Bottom Boy are familiar iconic characters that appear repeatedly in my work. The first two photos are a little washed out with some glare since I used my camera phone to take these pictures.

The Gun Lady was based on an old crime novel cover. I'm attracted to the idea of the "Dangerous Woman." Violence perpetrated by women is unusual- and when it does happen, society reacts much more strongly than when violence is perpetrated by a man.

A ghostly figure of a baby hovers in the background of this image. The woman is not aiming the gun at the baby- but this is somewhat ambiguous. Can a woman who uses violence to protect her child also nurture that child? Or does she become a threat to the baby as well? The gun aligns with the baby's genital area, a nod to the post-freudian feminist association of the phallus as a symbol of power, or possibly the sexist notion of the castrating woman.

The donkey head on this character references Shakespeare's Mid-Summer Night's Dream. In that play, Bottom, a laborer, is turned into a donkey by Puck, a court jester. Titania, the fairy queen falls under a spell and loves the Ass Bottom. The fairy king, Oberon, takes this opportunity to steal the changeling child under her care. A woman can lose her senses as well as her child when under a spell of foolish love.

I use anatomical illustrations when I am concerned about the health of someone I love. I began this drawing, and the water color painting below, after my son, Matthew, was hospitalized for a burst appendix last February.

In that sense- this character is not sismply a representation of the object of foolish love, nor just a representation of my concern for an ailing loved one- but an amalgamation of the two.

When Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007, a livejournal friend posted a video clip very similar to this one. It was edited differently, and I think it included her saying something about expecting to receive a lot of letters from people requesting money- but the artichoke still played a prominent role in the video clip. I think that's what I initially liked about her. Or maybe it was that she was so cranky and real.

Her book, the Golden Notebook, was published in 1962 about a writer who keeps four notebooks- different colors for different (compartmentalized?) parts of her life. The Golden Notebook brings them all together. I found this interesting because of my own art journal notebooks- and the way that my own life is compartmentalized. What if I could find a way to reconcile all the seemingly divergent aspects of my life- bring them together into one transcendental harmonious masterpiece?

It's a thick book- over 600 pages and it's non-linear. It bounces back and forth between different notebooks and different time periods. The book goes into detail about the hero and her friend, 'Free Women': two single mothers. One who is a writer and the other who is an actress. They have lovers and ex-lovers, talk about their complicated feelings about the communist party (they are members or ex-members), they talk about their psychoanalysis. I feel like I know this kind of woman, am this kind of woman, have had this kind of friendship.

But after four years I STILL haven't finished reading it. I feel ashamed of this- but part of me is glad that I'm not yet done with this. Several years ago I discovered Carson McCullers after seeing an incredible photographic portrait of her at a museum. In that photo she bore a remarkable resemblance to a good friend of mine- and that was enough to make me want to learn more. She wrote really wonderful short novels that take place in the American South in the early 20th Century. Within a month I had read a few and I haven't thought of her much since.


The Golden Notebook still won't be discarded so easily. It lives next to my bed. One day maybe I'll complete it. Just like perhaps one day I'll find a way to make my own art function in harmony with the rest of my life. Right now these two things (making art and keeping a roof over my head) seem to be working at cross-purposes.