Sunday, May 27, 2007

Lady of the Lowlands / Mary Magdalene / Witness (2006)






















Yesterday I posted the last image from the Black and White Series. As 2005 came to a close, a period of creative energy had run its course as a series of life stresses toppled me emotionally. Interestingly, at that time several health professionals suggested that I might make a good psychiatric nurse, a suggestion which puzzled me deeply and still does. The way I appear and the way I feel inside clearly don't match.

Today's image was an attempt to paint sometime in 2006, a year which began with emotional exhaustion. There is a clumsiness to it. Still, I find it compelling. A few days after I had painted it, it occurred to me that it might be how Mary Magdalene looked, although while I was painting it, I had no one in mind. It has something of the feeling of the drawing I did of a young man when I was 16 years old, in 1966, the first drawing I posted in this 40-year retrospective, a pencil drawing titled "Imaginary Brother as Witness," a drawing which came out of the years of the war in Vietnam.






















Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands

Tomorrow is Memorial Day 2007.

Here are some flowers from my porch today.




4 comments:

Lori Witzel said...

Ahhh...do those pinks smell cinnamon-spicy, or are they the new-fangled kind with not much scent?

For some reason, Blogger isn't showing your art. Glad I at least saw some brilliant flowers!

And, as always, thanks for visiting my corner of the universe.

Loren said...

There's something quite haunting about the picture, am. It's a powerful painting, but I'm not sure I'd want it hanging in my house where I had to look at it every day.

On the other hand, I would love to look at those flowers every day, though they're probably more beautiful because they're just now beginning to bloom.

am said...

Lori -- The flowers are fragrant, but not cinnamon-spicy the way pinks are. Not sure what they are. They are reminiscent of pinks. They might well be a variety of Sweet William but don't look exactly like the photos I found on Google.

Loren -- The painting is haunting to me, too. Very few of my paintings hang on my walls. My paintings that I live with on a daily basis are the ones of the ocean, and they bring me peace.

longjonblu said...

Your drawing of Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands is very cool. It's was era and my war also. Mary Magdalene has been my vision of the universal earth mother.