Calendar Series: 54th Month / Night of the Little Doves (Learning to Trust) (1989)

EVOLUTION OF FORGIVENESS

In this silence
I am looking for relief
Trusting grief
Loving the child never conceived
Loving all the shattered children
Who dared not trust, love or grieve
Loving the silent holy night
The wild blue sky of day
The courage of redwood trees
The beloved ocean
Still mirroring our wild hearts
Always calling to us:
Trust grief.

(poem begun in 6/17/2000, completed 8/26/2003)

Calendar Series: 53rd Month / Always Will (1989)

The valentine I received in 1989 was signed "Always Will."

The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the
heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.

(from "Credo," by Robinson Jeffers, Stones of the Sur, p. 144, with photographs by Morley Baer)

Calendar Series: 52nd Month / Speaking Without Words About Holy Contradictions (1989)

While painting this image, I was approaching my 40th birthday. Toward the bottom of the image are numbers which represent the years I had lived up to that point. I painted a number and then tried to remember something about that year before I went on to the next number. While I was working on this painting, the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred. I was born the day the People's Republic of China was born. I began to think about all the people who had been silenced during my lifetime and throughout history but who had found ways to speak without words.

Calendar Series: 51st Month / Beloved Ocean with Fearless Room in True Colors (1989)

Last night I dreamed that a small plane fell from the sky and crashed, nose down, into the bed of daisies my father had planted on the north side of the house where my family lived. A calm and unhurt letter carrier from the U.S. Post Office, holding his mail bag, stepped out of the plane and handed us our mail as we stood at the sliding glass door which opened onto our covered porch. We then helped him drag the undamaged airplane onto our porch and invited him into our house. I went outside on the porch to look at the plane. I realized that it was a handmade plane, built from plywood and painted a flat grey. I thought to myself, "Hey, I could build a plane like that."

Considering that I have felt discouraged recently about being out of work, the dream was oddly comforting.

Looking back at my art work has been unsettling lately, especially because I can see in these paintings a shift which led to my conclusion in 1994 that all my paintings were about "looking back," and that I didn't want to do that anymore, after which point I did less and less painting. I wasn't having positive new experiences, just feeling the weight of old experiences and increasingly distressing new experiences. The elation and creative energy that had begun building in 1980 with my return to college, and to drawing and writing, peaked in 1990 with the onset of the Gulf War in August of that year, along with some upsetting circumstances in my personal life and the lives of those I loved, and I began to experience symptoms of delayed post-traumatic stress disorder. I had thought that painting would help me and others transcend our difficulties, but I began to feel overwhelmed by the losses that life brings.

About today's painting:

I still love the ocean. It's been too long since I've been to the ocean. After seeing the film footage of the Christmas tsunami of 2004 and Katrina in 2005, though, I will never look at the ocean in the same way I once did. In this painting, I was recalling a sense of fearlessness that I no longer have. Still, I remember what 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.”

Now that's something to keep in mind.

Still having problems with uploading images

Calendar Series: 51st Month / Beloved Ocean with Fearless Room in True Colors (1989)

The image won't upload. Not sure why.

Update -- Here's the word from blogger.com:

Wednesday, March 14, 2007
We're experiencing some issues with some users posting photos. This will most likely affect you if you have recently migrated or just created a new blog.
Posted by at 09:06 PDT

Calendar Series: 50th Month / Woman with Sense of Time (1989)

Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling Stone 1966

Calendar Series: 49th Month / Rain, Night Garden and River (1989)

This painting was chosen by the owners of the Blue Horse Gallery for the flyer for my March 1990 show.

Calendar Series: 48th Month / Talking Fertile Land with Ocean (1989)

Today is the 4th of 40 days in which I have committed to drawing or painting, the first time I have made such a commitment since I was in high school. 

What I have so far is a painting I am still working on, using gouache and watercolor on a hot-pressed, 100% cotton, 140 lb., 12" x 16" Arches Watercolor Block. 

As I prepared to use this quote, which I first heard from my mother, "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!" I was surprised to discover that W. H. Murray, a Scottish mountaineer, attributed the above couplet to Goethe, but that research has shown that that is a questionable attribution.

Calendar Series: 47th Month / Talking About What is Lost and What is Not Lost (1989)

Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World: Seven Choices 

RESCUE A fire was burning. In another room Somebody was talking. Sunlight slanted Across the foot of my bed, and a glass of water Gleamed where it waited on a chair near my hand. I was alive and the pain in my head Was gone. Carefully I tried thinking Of those I had known. I let them walk And then run, and then open their mouths the way It used to cause the throbbing. It didn’t hurt Anymore. Clearer and clearer I stared Far into the glass. I was cured. From now on in my life there would be a place Like a scene in a paperweight. One figure in the storm Would be reaching out with my hand for those Who had died. It would always be still in that scene, No matter what happened. I could come back to it, Carefully, any time, to be saved, and go on. (Poem by William Stafford on p. 344 of FINDING DAYLIGHT AFTER LOSS SHATTERS YOUR WORLD: SEVEN CHOICES, by Elizabeth Harper Neeld, Ph.D.) The word MOURNING in Sanskrit means "to remember." Karma Repair Kit: Items 1-4

Calendar Series: 46th Month / Land Fish with Open Hearts Confronting Stranded Tool (1989)

After my March 1990 show at Blue Horse Gallery, I was approached by a local company which silkscreened designs on T-shirts. They liked this painting very much and wanted to use my painting on their T-shirts. Perhaps I should have accepted their offer. At the time, though, my goal was to be taken seriously as a gallery artist. Today I might have made a different decision. My father liked this painting, so I gave it to him as a gift. It hung in his living room in his retirement community apartment in Bellingham. When he moved to West Seattle the year before he died, he gave it back to me. The rusted antique tool was also used in "Calendar Series: 31st Month / Singing Tool with Full Moon Rising," from 1988:

Calendar Series: 45th Month / Imaginary Brothers with Breaking Wave

Today is three months since I began posting on Old Girl From The North Country. I've posted approximately half of my 40 years of drawings and paintings. On or around June 8, I will have accomplished what I set out to do with this blog.

Today's post is one of my many double portraits. I was thinking about what it might mean to be a brother. I thought about Bob Dylan singing, "Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace" in the song, "Let Me Die in My Footsteps," and the Dire Straits singing "Brothers in Arms". 

Now for a little story about the last few days. This last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I attended a workshop. Last week I had gone to the Worker Retraining Office of the local community college, in hopes of finding some direction in terms of getting myself back into a paying job. Everyone I talked with was kind and helpful. It was suggested that I attend a free three-day Dependable Strengths workshop at the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, where a person's "dependable strengths" are discovered using a process of listing good experiences where you felt you did something well, you enjoyed doing it, and you feel proud of what you did. From there, you expand that information into a report that you are supposed to give to friends, relatives, strangers, associates, former employers, and anyone else you can think of. 

On the first day of the workshop, there was an exercise where we were asked to draw a picture of the first good experience we could remember. So, with pencil and paper, I drew this picture: My memory is of being around 4 years old, alone, sitting in front of a television set and learning to draw. The program was called "Chris Cuts," but I'm not sure how that was spelled. Just now I did some internet searching and was unable to come up with any information about that early television program, which might have been on KQED public television. 

What I remember was that there was a friendly man who showed me how to draw geometric shapes by having me put a piece of paper up on the TV screen and tracing the shapes. Then he encouraged me to try to copy the shape I had traced. 

When I was 5 years old I drew the following picture of a horse and was praised for my ability to draw. So, here I am today at 57 years old, trying to find a good job or a course of study that would lead to a good job that would allow me to support myself so that I can continue working as an artist. 

The assignment we were given on the last day of the workshop involved networking. We were told that if we used a scripted set of questions and responses and handed a copy of our report to friends, relatives, strangers, associates, former employers, and anyone else we could think of and did this for 40 days, we would most certainly find a job that we would enjoy doing. 

The problem is that a "job I would enjoy doing" requires that I go back to school, so what I decided to do instead is to do a drawing or painting every day for 40 days, and continue searching for course of study that would give me the skills to do a "job that I would enjoy doing."

Calendar Series: 44th Month / Imaginary Brother with Fish with Open Heart (1989)

Calendar Series: 43rd Month / River Room Painting Itself (1989)

Calendar Series: 42nd Month / Gifts of Love from Imaginary Brothers (1989)

Calendar Series: 41st Month / Letters from the North and South Fork of the Night River (1989)

"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in." (from the film, "Secondhand Lions.")

Calendar Series: 40th Month / Imaginary Brothers with Questions (1989)

This is the first of 30 images painted in gouache and watercolor, using paper from 18 x 24 Arches watercolor blocks, as well as being the first image from 1989.

Calendar Series: 39th Month / Talking Rainbow with Pastures of Plenty (1988)

This is the last of the Calendar Series images that were done on a 12 x 16 Arches watercolor block. When I finished that block, I began to paint on an 18 x 24 block. I continued with the same numbering system, but the nature of the images began to change as I worked on a larger sheet of paper. 

To hear Pete Seeger sing "Pastures of Plenty," which was written by Woody Guthrie, go to YouTube and type in "Pastures of Plenty." I first heard the song sung by Woody Guthrie on a Folkways album I found at the public library when I was in high school. I learned about Woody Guthrie from Bob Dylan who also sings a moving version of this great song.

Calendar Series: 38th Month / Innocence (The Unexpected) (1988)

Not exactly sure why I titled this image with the name of the 25th hexagam of the I Ching. I do remember the first dramatic view of the Pacific Ocean on the way out of San Francisco on Highway 1 going south and remember wanting to paint how it felt to see that. Up near the setting full moon, which appears to be eclipsed, are the number symbols from the six sides of a European-style die. I must have been wondering if there is a connection between dice and hexagrams. To read the text for the 25th hexagram, click here. Below are two of my pastel drawings posted previously, in which an eclipsed full moon appears. Self-Portrait of an Old Friend as a Young Man (1982): and Middle of the Journey (1984):