Awareness meditation on the power of bearing witness and on being a compassionate witness

Awareness.
(The Buddha's reply when asked to sum up his teaching in a single word)

Witness

Our hearts go out

A friend of mine emailed me before she flew to the Philippines on October 30th after the unexpected death of her father, and I have not heard from her since.  I picture her safe with family and await word from her.  I have not wanted to let the scope of this disaster in.

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.

Person with Questions (1984)

The sixth transitional piece, "Person with Questions" is the second of seventeen pieces where watercolor, gouache and Rembrandt pastels were applied to single sheets of rough 140 lb. 100% cotton Arches watercolor paper. 

Although the series of Rembrandt pastel images had been done in a classroom setting while sitting at a drawing bench or on the floor in my home, around this time my former husband gave me a portable drafting table, which allowed me to work more comfortably. To this day, I am grateful to him for the gift of that table. During this time, I had begun to work 35 hours a week in the evenings in a hospital as a medical transcriptionist. 

Beginning in 1983, I had talked with a vocational counselor at the local community college, taken the suggestion that I might make a good medical transcriptionist and begun taking classes to improve my typing skills, after having gone through college always looking at my fingers as I slowly typed up essays for both my English and Art classes. Following that, I was accepted into a Medical Assisting Program, taking only the courses that applied to medical transcription. Because I did so well in the medical transcription classes, I was hired as a medical transcriptionist while still completing the community college classes. 

Previous to that time, I had worked as a letter carrier, pharmaceutical production worker, industrial sewing machine operator, and worked in numerous short-term minimum wage jobs.  Medical transcription suited me, and I worked in that field from the beginning of 1984 until the end of 2004 and have had paying jobs sporadically since then. 

"Person with Questions" was accepted for the 4th Annual Whatcom County Art Competition in 1984 and displayed at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art in Bellingham, Washington. Although it didn't win an award, it was placed in a prominent location, the first piece visible from one of the two main entry doors to the room where the art work was displayed. 

As I approached the room and saw my painting, one of my former art teachers, Paul Glenn, was standing near me, not aware of my presence, and upon seeing my painting said to his companion that the painting was a masterpiece. I am fortunate to have had such affirming teachers.

Untitled Witness (1984)

This untitled piece, done using watercolor and gouache, is the fourth in a series of twenty-three transitional paintings and one clay sculpture, which I created during the time I was seriously considering leaving the marriage relationship I had entered in 1973. Not an easy time in my life. The image is, once again, derived from a photo of Bob Dylan.

Witness with Blue Hair (1984)

When I first tried to upload the images for today, I got this message: Safari can’t open the page “http://www2.blogger.com/upload-image.do”. The error was: “bad server response” (NSURLErrorDomain:-1011) 

 After trying a few things, I noticed that I was trying to upload a TIFF image instead of a JPEG image. Once I converted the image to JPEG, there was no problem. What a relief to be able to figure that out! 

Visual art forms bear witness, as do the written word and the spoken word and song. This witness is singing. The second image above no longer exists except as a reproduction. The first image is a cropped version (created using iPhoto) of the reproduction. 

After I had thought this pastel drawing was complete and after I had photographed it sometime in 1984, the red and black bars on the left side of the drawing began to bother me. They seemed to limit and inhibit this witness, so I got out my scissors and removed the left side of the drawing but failed to photograph the cropped version. 

Sometime later, I was showing photographs to a man who was interested in buying one of my drawings. He asked about the uncropped photograph of "Witness with Blue Hair." When I told him that I had cropped it, he said that if I would reattach the cropped part, he would buy the drawing. I refused, but he bought another drawing instead. A short time later, another man bought the cropped version.

Witness with Courage (1984)

There is fierce wind and rain outside my window this morning. The lights have been flickering. Georgia O'Keeffe said: “I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life -- and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”

Photo by Todd Webb, Georgia O'Keeffe sketching at age 74 in 1961

Young Woman (1983)

Today is the first day of 2007. January 1 is one of a number of days that celebrate a new year. 

This young woman might be witnessing the first light of a new year. December 8 will be the New Year's Day for this blog. It is nearly a month since I began blogging. In the first week of February, I will be showing a series of watercolor and gouache paintings that I did beginning in 1987, which was the year my eating disorder recovery began. Those paintings are called "The Calendar Series" and were pivotal in my healing. 

The drawings and paintings we have looked at so far came from a part of me that thrived despite an eating disorder that had plagued me throughout most of my life prior to 1987.

Untitled Witness (1983)

Until now, I hadn't made the connection that "Untitled Witness" from 1983 is related to the drawing from 1966 that I posted on this blog on December 8, 2006, "Imaginary Brother as Witness": In both images, I see a young person who is a witness to something unnamed, a person who is marked and changed by what was witnessed. He is not guilty, but he is no longer innocent. 

As I look at these drawings I remember Bob Dylan singing: “. . . Ring them bells, for the time that flies, for the child that cries when innocence dies . . .” (from “Ring Them Bells,” Bob Dylan, 1989) “ . . . In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face . . .” (from “Every Grain of Sand," Bob Dylan, 1981) “ . . . I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn . . ." (from "Shelter From the Storm,” Bob Dylan, 1974) “ . . . The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone . . .” (from “Tombstone Blues,” Bob Dylan, 1965) 

 "I was thinking of a series of dreams Where nothing comes up to the top Everything stays down where it's wounded And comes to a permanent stop Wasn't thinking of anything specific Like in a dream, when someone wakes up and screams Nothing too very scientific Just thinking of a series of dreams Thinking of a series of dreams Where the time and the tempo fly And there's no exit in any direction 'Cept the one that you can't see with your eyes Wasn't making any great connection Wasn't falling for any intricate scheme Nothing that would pass inspection Just thinking of a series of dreams Dreams where the umbrella is folded Into the path you are hurled And the cards are no good that you're holding Unless they're from another world In one, numbers were burning In another, I witnessed a crime 

In one, I was running, and in another All I seemed to be doing was climb Wasn't looking for any special assistance Not going to any great extremes I'd already gone the distance Just thinking of a series of dreams" (from "Series of Dreams," Bob Dylan, 1991) 

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Today is the last day of 2006. 

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Child stepped

leapt 

grew steady 

everything under the sun is new. 

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Kind wishes to all for the New Year.