shaken awake

i was woken by a flash of a nightmare this morning. inga playing up in a tree and the big branch broke and she was there, writhing and making this horrible, low sound. a sound of total pain. and it was this sound, this sight of her writhing that woke me up and i couldn't go back to sleep. too full of that rush of terrified fear. i opened the door and there she was, wagging her tail so hard her whole body swung with it, and squealing with joy for a new day- everyday is the best day ever for a dog. every morning is a joyful, amazing thing. and i was so glad that it was all just a dream but the dream kicked lose some strange memories from my childhood and i've been writing all day so far as a result.

yesterday i started a new huge drawing of a tire swing. jon benet's tire swing. and i've started the second panel of it today already in between all my scribbling in my notebook. it is like this, only BIG! and in the blackest graphite.


Portrait of JonBenet Ramsey
24" x 24"
oil on canvas, 2008

it is an image i keep coming back to. an image that when people read the title they don't want to look at it anymore. and this response twists my heart but it also tells me the job is being done. it flips the switch. it achieves the movement of being "work" to becoming "text". it activates.

and i go back to it and i see myself somewhere in there... which probably sounds very strange... filthy somehow as i am obviously not a murder victim...

but there is something there, in her absence, that sends the shiver through me... like a memory than ran away. something lost. hidden in the fibers of that rope or in the shine of still leaves. i am called back. this images gives me a ground. it is Blackland as well. it is a homeland of a kind.

and it makes me think of charlotte delbo... she became a poet by having survived the camps. this chase to find a language, to find the one right word that would put the world right-side-up again... an image, a reflection by which one could know oneself, know the nature of things... the search for something that can assuage the strange and haunted heaviness of living... the guilt of having survived.




Auschwitz




This city we were passing through
was a strange city.
Women wore hats
perched on curly hair.
They also wore shoes and stockings
as is done in town.
None of the inhabitants of this city
had a face
and in order to hide this
all turned away as we passed
even a child who was carrying in his hand
a milk can as tall as his legs
made of violet enamel
and who fled when he saw us.
We were looking at these faceless beings
and it was we who were amazed.
We were disappointed as well
hoping to see fruits and vegetables in the shops.
Indeed, there were no shops
only display windows
wherein I would have liked to recognize myself
amid the ranks sliding over the glass planes.
I raised an arm
but all the women wished to recognize themselves
all raised an arm
and not one found out which one she was.
The face of the station clock registered the time
we were happy to look at it
it was the real time
and relieved to arrive at the beet silos
where we were taken to work
on the other side of town
we had walked through like a wave of morning sickness.






(from Auschwitz and After)

more about WHY...

last night in bed, i couldn't stop thinking about my last post and the question WHY. it's been my belief for many years that all art is in some way a self-portrait, no matter what the work actually looks like or the form it takes. even something as simple as aesthetics (preferences) can be pretty telling about the person who makes the work... even if it's just something as simple as an affinity for certain colors and shapes. in my case, i'm obviously drawn to a more black and white approach within art-making. as far as i can remember, i've always loved the color black and, when i was a new painter, it was actually very hard for me to figure out how to work with it. it took years to get away from a very, very colorful palette. during that time, i rarely made a painting that i actually liked. they just looked so opposite from what i was feeling and thinking about. when i finally learned enough to be able to bring the work to a place where my ideas took charge and i could dictate the appearance of the paintings, i was overjoyed. i was finally making work that i liked looking at. the appearance of the work finally mirrored the driving force behind it: loss.

so picking up where i left off... WHY loss as an issue?

loss is a huge component within identity construction. things, people, experiences are largely defined by what they are not. the absence of something highlights what is present... and it doesn't always have to be a bad thing. sometimes the experience of loss is actually quite happy. for example: graduation day. you put in the time, do your homework, and pay your tuition bills. then one day you get to walk across a stage, shake hands with some big important dude from your school - whom you've never even seen before - and then become a graduate. and in this becoming, you lose what you were... a student at that school. you don't get to come back after the summer passes, you don't get to hang out with teachers and other students anymore (at least not in the way you had been), you are finished with that experience and it isn't going to repeat itself. the experience is gone. your memories of that time are what you get to keep. memories are a direct result of loss. and these losses (happy and sad) comprise a persons present state, outlook, and the way they conduct themselves. of course i'm simplifying the issue right now, everyone's experiences are different and effect us differently... but we have all experienced some form of loss and we can use those experiences to relate to one another, to understand the OTHER point of view, and to well up compassion for one another.

it's compassion that i'm after in the work... and sometimes, in order to create a space where compassion is possible, the brutality of the situation or experience of loss needs to shown without any softening or sugar on top. we live in a pretty jaded world, i've realized. our tolerance for horror is pretty high. we are Romans in that way. and the the thing we lose when we gain such an enormous tolerance for horror or trauma, is the ability to sympathize... to feel (or at least validate) the pain of The Other. so my work uses metaphor to get around this huge tolerance and come at uncomfortable issues from a different direction.

adorno's famous quote is "There is no poetry after Auschwitz", meaning that human kind had lost it's humanity. the losses experiences (anguish, torture, humiliation, murder)was so vast, so unexplainable and horrible, that beauty was no longer available... and that any attempt to make beauty was a slap in the face of those victimized and brutalized. i can see why this statement was made but, nevertheless, a huge percentage of those who survived the camps became poets themselves. words were what helped them survive, helped express their guilt about having survived when so many others had not. it was when i read the work of Paul Celan and Charlotte Delbo that the power and promise of metaphor as a way to build a bridge toward understanding and compassion became clear. my work is definitely not on the same level as theirs, never will be, but the lesson of how to communicate about loss, trauma, suffering came through: metaphor... a more poetic approach.

poetry exists even at the epicenter of destruction. it is a form of communication built from fragments, shards, remains... and is beautiful in spite of this. this beauty is what i chase.

that's why i deal with loss in my work.