last one for awhile...

.


Lineage 5
48" x 36"
oil on canvas, 2010


she's been waiting patiently for months while i moved off to work on other things. a few weeks ago, i looked at her hanging in the hallway, so close to being done, and felt like a total asshole. so i took her off her nail and put shadows in the aprons, deepened the black, and gave her a name. she is happy and soft and beautiful. she's the last one for awhile. the maid series is definitely one i'll come back to. i can feel it and it feels like such a right and true image for me to work with, but i think i put too much pressure on them and on myself. i want to back away from them for a bit and just let them be. love them on their own terms: without expectation.

breathy sigh of "yes"

the sun came out just a little just a little and good enough to see the new painting in a truer light. so i hauled her outside to see her and see her honestly and i'm not gonna wait til monday to call it. she's done. :)


sovereign
46" x 40"
oil on canvas
angela simione, 2010


(a wee bit of a glare on the canvas but good enough for now)

possibly... maybe...

i'll stare at them a bit longer... a couple more days. and i might realize i'm getting ahead of myself but today, out in the cold and with the pain in my stomach, it feels complete.

somehow... a bit more somber than the others.

maybe it's the light. i'll have to snap a better picture once the sun comes back.



Lineage 5
46" x 39 3/4"
oil on canvas
angela simione, 2009

happy...

the day started the most wonderful way it possibly could-

i made coffee, lugged the canvas outside, and sat and stared at the thing for the first hour of my morning. i tried to find something to scrutinize but i just couldn't. and then that big, warm wave came. the one that whispers, "you're done. it's finished. now smile." haha! :)



Lineage (4)
44" x 38"
oil on canvas
angela simione, 2009

after a long day of painting...

i'm finally feeling like it's appropriate to give the title "done". after much ado, struggle, and the annoying back and forth dance that is process, i give you Lineage 3-


Lineage 3
44" x 38"
oil on canvas
angela simione, 2009

done! finally!

Lineage 2 (Hush)
48" x 36"
oil on canvas
angela simione, 2009

more questioning...

the maids are far enough along at this point (as a series) that it's definitely time to start putting together an artist statement. i've been wracking my brain, coming up with tons of "starts" for a statement but i eventually find myself referencing my own past rather than keeping the statement exclusive to the work itself. the work isn't meant to explain me. it isn't meant to be that kind of vehicle.

drawing from personal experience is a great thing... so long as it is eventually translated in to something more inclusive, wider reaching, encompassing, open. making the work all about me isn't going to leave many doors open for others to have a private experience of their own with the work. it doesn't allow for a wide open narrative or freedom for the viewer to cook up their own narratives. and i want that for the audience. it's why i leave out the faces.

faces are specific. i want the viewer to add the face. the viewer finishes the work. it is a call to memory, the viewer's memories and experiences, that i appreciate and am trying to lure.

and as far as reality is concerned, i am quite anonymous, the audience is anonymous, and the ladies are anonymous... and this anonymity is the site where hope and understanding can spring. it is a place (or state of being) that nurtures a type of fearlessness of approach, a type of acceptance, that labels and class and "perception" don't allow for.

i'm blathering, working out ideas... but it helps to write it out here.

there's something i'm after with this work that goes far beyond my self and what my experiences have been or who/what i am as a person. that's the stuff i need to get to. that's the stuff i want this space to be about- that site of hope where connections are made and understanding is possible. no utopias, just good ol' fashioned human goodness and frailty. a willingness to speak and to hear. embarrassment, brutality, forgiveness, vengeance, poetry and all.

so far...

painting last night, painting this morning. the sun's out and all the tourists must be off barbecuing somewhere because it is so unexpectedly peaceful outside. a beautiful day.

i'm at a pretty critical point in one of the maid portraits where i can see it finished in my mind and how beautiful these ladies will be if i just keep moving slowly and listen to what they're whispering. my sweetheart and i discuss them all the time. today we talked about my family history and my days spend scrubbing toilets and being sneered at and my days spent as a cocktail waitress and how when i brought this up once in a class discussion, the whole room went silent and the other students had a hard time looking me in the eye. it was a private school after all, how did i manage to infiltrate they're ranks? a great many of them had had maids and nannys and all that. their mother's never worked as bartenders or paid for groceries with food stamps. and i'm not saying i'm any better than anyone else. like a great many things, struggle is also relative. but history and experience isn't relative... it's just what we choose to record is what gets remembered and esteemed... what is normal... and my history was definitely not the norm at my alma mater. i made them a bit uncomfortable. and i wasn't the only one with that kind of background but we were definitely in the minority and apparently our stories weren't welcome. once, outside a class, a girl actually said to me, "i'm so tired of listening to everybody's fucking poverty rants". stunning, huh? she hadn't realized who she was talking to. i hadn't shared any stories with her at that point and she'd just ensured that i never would. never.

and the more i work on these paintings, the more i realize how unspoken these histories are when they're told by the people who have actually lived them. we want out poverty beautified- Dorthea Lang style. i love that photograph as much as anybody else, and the era it was taken in makes it okay i suppose, but sometimes it just seems a little like poaching, a little like imperialism, a little like "slumming it". and that's the other thing about this work- it's helping me figure out where to stand.

this day...

a vulture circling, it's wide wings casting a shadow larger than an airplane... canadian geese in their fright-filled flying V... jack rabbits running from the sounds of us: our morning jog in the vineyard.

home. coffee. painting.

ahhhhh.... painting. one pair of ladies faces forward, arms crossed, foreboding, faceless but i can feel they're definitely not smiling. another pair wrapped up in an ear-whispering embrace- the secret-sharers. a third pair... one halfway hidden behind the other, their limbs tired and limp and their sides. i am surrounded and i dance back and forth between them all...

i will spend the next few hours in a different gear. it is my sweetheart's birthday today. there is a massive love letter waiting to be written and a steak dinner to prepare. :)

WOW!

wow. wow. wow.

all i can say is WOW!

i got invited to participate in the San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art's Mono-Marathon today! oh-my-lord! someone up there is definitely smiling down on me. what a huge honor. WOW!
AND, as if that wasn't good enough, my sweet ladies sold at AAF in New York yesterday. whoever you are, thank you so much! it's one of my favorite works and i adore it. you've encouraged me to keep at it and make this series shine as hard and bright as it possibly can. thank you for giving them a new home. :)

i am floating....

clockwise...

i started a new 'maids' portrait last night. i miss my ladies too much. i rushed to the studio this morning- scrubbing paint in to the canvas by 6am. i feel happy again. not lonely, not needing, not anything other than complete. i think this is the new series of paintings i've been waiting for, been trying to hunt down amid all the false starts. there's just something in this work - in particular - that i am drawn to in a way that's hard to explain... an acceptance of, a wrestling with, history... my history, my mother's and grandmother's history... that is cleansing somehow... unexpectedly calming. i guess that's the magic of learning your lineage.

and so for the last 4 hours, i've been at work. i'm giving the canvas a rest now and myself too.

i forgot to post a poem for National Poetry Month yesterday but i suppose that's alright. there is such a thing as too much poetry, i suppose, and it's definitely not something i want to sour myself on. for me, poetry has always followed certain moods, certain shifts in the light... it's not an everyday thing. and the last thing i'd want is to make poetry seem 'everyday'. nevertheless, i'm glad there is a national poetry month and i do intend to take advantage of it. :) on that note, i'll be brave again today and share one of my own that i've been working on. it might be finished, it might not be. it's so hard to tell. and as always, critique is more than welcome: i've got strong shoulders. :)


clockwise, counting...


she goes clockwise,
messy hair and
stained everything.

she doesn't keep up with the housework like she should,
going clockwise and all.

she keeps turning around.
something in the corner is scaring her.
there's a man saying her name.
she sticks her head under the couch.

clockwise, she is counting
her found quarters.

a man says her name.
she turns around.
there's something in that corner,
counting

she goes clockwise.



-angela simione, 2009

lineage...

got up at 5:20 this morning and was in the studio working by 6:30. the day is off to a wonderful, happy, exciting start and here's why:


lineage
44" x 38"
oil on canvas
angela simione, 2009

she's done! YAY! she's so damn pretty! excuse me while i toot my own tarnished horn but, i love this painting! love, love, LOVE! i'm going to spend the rest of the morning sipping coffee and staring at this canvas.

when i started it - always thinking of anonymity and loss, ya know - i thought about my own history... the history of all the women in my family, really... and realized that "cleaning women" are pretty much invisible. they have no voice, no real power... at least not when they're on the job. i've worked as a maid before. very few of the people whose homes i cleaned even looked at me, let alone spoke to me. you are required to be silent, a ghost moving unseen and unheard through the house... and don't make the client uncomfortable by highlighting your humanity at all...

this painting is made to honor such a lineage- a long, undocumented, "uncomfortable" history that isn't spoken of, the women who handle the messes, who have a relationship with dirt... it isn't polite to speak of such things.

progress...

yay for saturday! all week, i got up at 5am with my sweetie. that's how early he gets up for his job. my thought was that (1) it's always easier to wake up when there's someone else banging around in the kitchen and getting ready for the day and (2) i'd have the whole house to myself for a solid 9 hours and could use that time toward much better things than catching zees. and, in a lot of ways, waking up that early feeds productivity. ever since i graduated, it's been somewhat of a struggle figuring out how best to manage my time and energy. i mean, i'd been in school my entire life and so my class schedule was what kept me in line, kept me moving, kept me productive. and it isn't that i've necessarily been any less productive since finishing school, i just haven't felt as serious as i used to. i figured i'd try out an early morning schedule again and see how i fared...

i got so much done! oh my god! like, by NOON! amazing! i've got 6 canvasses going and a huge collection of headless paper dolls floating through the whole house. i'll have pics soon, i'm just stunned by how much i got done. i even painted wet in to wet on one of the canvasses which is something i never do... but i sorta like it. partnered with the more photographic, realist work, there's a definite charm to that painting approach. i still buffed out all the brush strokes but the "painterliness" of the method is still super prominent in spite of that. we'll see if i end up keeping it or making it as realistic as i possibly can... the thing i usually strive for in oil paintings which is why it's taking me so long to get them wrapped up.

today, i got up at 8:45 but come monday morning, i'll get back on my new early morning schedule and will definitely get the big canvas finished. i can't wait. i'm going to have to stop myself from working on it soon it's just that with each new layer of paint i put down, the more realistic and complete it appears. it's hard to stop when you notice that happening but i don't want to end up overworking this piece. normally, i'm nervous about posting in-progress shots but here's what i mean:


layer 1


layer 4


layer 6


layer 7

see what i mean. but i've really got to make myself get this one wrapped up. i need to put the buttons back on her dress and work out some of the highlights and fix her hand... other than that, it's almost done. :) it's pretty big- 44" x 38" so it takes a couple hours to get a single layer of paint down across the entire surface and i'm trying to be really careful at this point too... i really don't want to mess this one up. i like it too much. :)