true story.

make it beautiful. make it romantic.

covering it in oil makes it easier to swallow.



private romance (Angela, age 19)
42" x 35"
oil on canvas
angela simione, 2010

continuing...

i met my maids first thing this morning. the shadows and highlights in their aprons want to dance today- slow and specific... intimate, delicate, just a hint and a nudge, a feather on my wrist.

this is when painting feels the most natural, the most powerful- when you can see, with complete assurance, what the piece is asking for, the direction it wants to go...

this is when i am happiest. when all my heart smiles.

process...

i am back with my maids. back in the shadows of aprons. back in the subtle shifts... body language, pose, tilt... all the small corners that belie the little secrets, all the untold things, the history that went unrecorded, unnoticed, not shared, not held, not made warm. all that's been hidden and forgotten. that's why all the black. that's why all the white.

it isn't easy. this work has a weight that i struggle with. but it's so much better than i am that i'm sold on struggling with it for as long as it takes.

my neighbors asked me when i'll stop painting the maids. i said "when they're done with me". they started giving me ideas for new paintings after that... a different subject matter in spite of what i'd just said. suggestions... none of which i want and none of which i need. i wasn't offended. they don't understand. it took me a quite awhile to learn how to respect my practice too... i need to be right where i am. i trust this work and i know others will trust it too. i learned well and good how to trust the work a long time ago. i move in the direction it points. i take the tools i'll use and no more. and when i get tired and beaten, they say "rest". i curl up with my books and crochet hooks and wander off for awhile. i get warm and rested and then i come back.

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

on a roll...

3 more little apron paintings in the bag, a ton of work on the next maid portraits (soon. very, very soon), and these:



this is one of the mono prints i made for the SJICA last month. i'd spent hours working on the very first one and, after pulling that print and a few ghosts, i painted back in to the original plate with sepia and black ink to get this piece.




and this is one of the ghost prints, touched up with a bit of black gouache. yum.

both pieces:
untitled
22" x 15"
mono print
angela simione, 2009


the top piece is available now at black fence.

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.