Woman Trying to Remember What She is Trying to Forget (1986)

This morning I have been struggling to write about this painting which came from a personal experience of domestic violence in May of 1971 when I was 21 years old. The lingering effects of the recent upper respiratory illness are still with me. Although I got up at 6 a.m., I found myself so drowsy and headachy at around 8 a.m. that I let myself fall back to sleep. The sun is beginning to show through the morning fog, which was an ice fog before the sun came up. It was the sun coming through the fog that woke me up again. In this painting I was trying to talk about how it feels to live with the memory of having deeply loved someone who tried to destroy your love and who failed to destroy your love but left you with the knowledge that as much as you had loved that person, you would have to live without them. The terrifying memories don't go away. Neither do the memories of what I thought was loving and being loved. One set of memories keeps me vigilant. The other set of memories, of loving and being loved, is crucial to my physical, emotional and spiritual survival. The woman walking alone by the sea was beginning to remember the feeling of loving and being loved, but then she would find her herself wanting to return to the one who had hurt her. When this painting came to me, fifteen years had passed since that spring of 1971. During those years, I had married, tried to put the past behind me, struggled with depression, gone deeper into the eating disorder which had first manifested when I was 10 years old, begun to express myself more and more as an artist and writer, graduated from college and begun making a good living as a medical transcriptionist, which led to a decision to leave an increasingly troubled marriage and to live alone for the first time in my life at age 35. Thirty-six years will have passed this coming May. For the entire year of 2004, I attended a facilitated domestic violence support group which met weekly and which slowly brought the healing that had so long escaped me. The other women's stories helped me see how far I had come since 1971 and that I still had a journey of healing ahead of me. Currently, I am continuing the process of healing with the help of Jungian therapy on a monthly basis. Writing this blog and reading other blogs that give me reason to celebrate life in all its complexity have become part of daily healing.

Mona Lisa and the Clown and the Cool Rain of the Law (1985)

Today I'm feeling much better but still have low energy. This extended looking back takes a surprising amount of energy. This is one of my favorite pieces because I have no explanation for its power to give me hope.

Untitled (1985)

What was this one called? I don't remember. It was something about the power of music and landscape to lift one's spirits. I placed it as a surprise in the bottom of a large package I sent to a Japanese exchange student. She wrote and thanked me for the package but didn't mention the painting. When I wrote back and asked about the painting, she wrote sadly that she hadn't noticed the painting and had thrown out the box and packing materials. 

I'm not feeling well again today, but this painting still lifts my spirits.

Woman with Window (1985)

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues You can tell by the way she smiles -- "Visions of Johanna," from Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan, 1966

Woman Turning Toward the Light (1985)

Yesterday during my yoga class, my throat began to feel sore. Last night, the soreness increased. This morning my voice is going away. All I can do today is post "Woman Turning Toward The Light."

We Were Talking About The Anger Wars (1985)

In 1985, I heard a man describe himself as a "veteran of the anger wars," referring ruefully to his difficulties in dealing with his anger. 

Today I typed those words into Google and came up with no matches. Then I typed in "the anger wars" and came up with three matches, two in 2003 (in a political context) and one in 2005 (in a personal context). 

For a good part of my life, I didn't understand anger and was unable to understand why some people couldn't control their anger. That has changed. As I began to recover from the eating disorder, I was astonished at how angry I felt much of the time. I have become a veteran of the anger wars. Although I wasn't trying for likenesses, focusing instead on the physical gestures, this drawing was derived from a photograph of Country Joe McDonald and Janis Joplin, taken during the years when the United States was still involved in Vietnam. 

In the last days of the last century, I had a dream where Janis Joplin said to us all who are still alive, "Please kiss the 21st century for me." I have taken that to heart.

Two Witnesses (1984) Three Daffodils (2007)

From January of 1970 to December 8, 1970, a man I love was a helicopter mechanic for the U.S. Army in Vietnam. He was a direct witness to war, and I am an indirect witness. I don't know much of what he saw there, but when he came home I saw a look in his eyes I will not forget. 

It has been twenty-three years since I made this image using gouache, watercolor and Rembrandt pastels on Arches watercolor paper and thirty-seven years since he returned from war. 

These days I think about the men and women who are in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the friends and families who love them. These days I am grateful for the healing presence of ponds, lakes, rivers, creeks, bays, straits, mountains, foothills, day and night skies, birds, and trees. 

 I just noticed three daffodils coming up in the large planters on my porch. Last year I noticed them on January 23.

Homage to Edvard Munch (1984)

"Homage to Edvard Munch," is in contrast to "People Listening" from yesterday's post. In this image, a woman and man are leaning away from each other in somewhat awkward postures. When I first showed this image to friends and acquaintances, at least one person remarked that it was reminiscent of Edvard Munch's images, a remark which prompted me to title the drawing as I did. 

Although my intention was to draw a peaceful image of a woman and a man sleeping, "peaceful" didn't seem to be what was conveyed to most people. 

During the early 1980s, there were a number of occasions when I viewed exhibits of work by Edvard Munch. While I was moved by his dramatic use of color, his subject matter of grief, anxiety and alienation distressed me. All those years ago, it was heartening for me to learn that, after years of mental instability, Edvard Munch in his later paintings showed a decrease in pessimism, portraying the natural world in vibrant and healing color. Looking around the internet this morning to refresh my memory in regard to Edvard Munch's images, I found a site which has a representative selection of Munch's work.

People Listening (1984)

Person with Helpers (1982-1984)

This clay sculpture was formed sometime between 1982 and 1984 in Santa Cruz, California, at the home of a friend who is a potter and who will remain anonymous. My friend handed me a lump of clay and encouraged me to work with it. I had just spent some time walking and talking with the man from "Middle of the Journey" (see post from yesterday) and was thinking of him as I molded the clay. "Person with Helpers" was the result. 

My friend sent the piece to me a few months later. Although I tried to make adjustments to the photo image to show the true color of the fired clay, my adjustments were unsuccessful. As I look at the image today, I can see it in Jungian terms as an animus image from an earlier time in my life. I no longer have this small sculpture, but I can still see the warm brownish-orange color of the fired clay in my mind. 

As part of a difficult letting-go process in 1999, I placed the sculpture in an inconspicuous location in a city park. Although I had been able to let go of the piece, I felt compelled to return to visit it numerous times until it disappeared. Sometime between 1966 and 1967, I had sculpted a much smaller image of the same man from memory. In 1999, I left that older piece, along with other mementos, at The Moving Wall when it came to a nearby small town.

Middle of the Journey (1984)

In 1984, I was 34 years old, conscious that I was nearing the middle of my life assuming I lived to old age, and painfully aware that I didn't like the direction my personal life had taken. 

The image may be seen as what C. G Jung called an animus. In the process of taking myself seriously as an artist, I had begun moving out of a dark sense of myself to a place of acceptance of both my shadow and light. I was also thinking about a man my age whom I had known since I was 17 and trying to picture him moving with me into a dynamically balanced life. What appears to be black in this watercolor and gouache painting is what is known as Payne's Gray, a versatile color in the watercolor palette.

Working with Intuition and Three Angels (1984/1992)

When I began this painting in 1984, I had no idea that it would take until 1992 before it was complete. When I stopped working on this painting in 1984, I considered it a failed effort. For the most part my drawings and paintings are done in the space of one or two days, but on occasion I will tack a painting on the wall for a year or more until I figure out what it needs in order to be complete. 

This painting didn't go on the wall but went in my stack of what I considered affecting but failed efforts. 

In the summer of 1992, I went through my stack of failed efforts, found this painting, and decided to crop it and add some new elements that were part of the imagery and style I had begun using in 1987. "Three Witnesses" became "Working with Intuition and Three Angels." 

As a side note, when the finished piece was shown in Blue Horse Gallery in Bellingham, Washington, the card beside the painting was mislabeled "Working with Intuition and Three Angles," an intriguing reading of the title. The difference in color between the two reproductions can be explained by the fact that the photos were taken on separate occasions under different lighting. I was unable to match them using the iPhoto adjustments.

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.

Gion Festival (1984)

Gion Festival (click to see Heron dance performed during Gion festival in Kyoto).

In 1984, my former husband and I welcomed a young Japanese woman into our home as part of a cultural exchange program, which I believe was called The Cultural Homestay Institute and which brought a group of young Japanese women and men to our small town in the state of Washington in August of that year. A friend of hers from the group visited our home and saw the untitled painting I was working on. He said that it reminded him of a float from the Gion Festival. I tried to create a link to the Wikipedia entry for the Gion Festival, but got an error message: Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is not closed. As far as I can tell, the tag was closed. Anyone else had trouble like this?

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.

Untitled (1984)

This image was created when I took one of my paintings that seemed to be a failure and then cut it up and pasted it back together, along with pieces from other unsuccessful paintings, in a way that didn't feel like a failure. It may have once had a title, but I don't remember what that might be. It is one of the few paintings no one bought. I can understand why. It is jarring. I suppose it could be called a collage. The original image was derived from a photograph of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in 1976 during the Rolling Thunder Tour.

Untitled Conversation (1984)

Today is the 21st celebration of Martin Luther King Day. I remembered the song, "Happy Birthday," by Stevie Wonder, which I still have on a vinyl album, but found it on iTunes and bought it again just now. 

When I looked out the window to the southeast before dawn this morning, the waning crescent moon was just above the hills, along with what the Farmer's Almanac says are Mars and Jupiter, appearing as morning stars. Even now at almost 8 a.m., I can still see the slim crescent moon as it rises into the day sky. It is odd to wake to snow on the ground, clear pre-dawn skies, and temperatures in the 20s for so many days in this part of Northwest Washington. 

This painting, done using a combination of watercolor and gouache (opaque watercolor), belongs to a shelter for women who are trying to put their lives together after experiencing domestic violence. Several of my drawings and paintings were donated to this shelter for fundraising events. This one was not sold, but the people at the shelter liked it, and so I gave it to them.

The Cat is Not Amused (1983-1984)

This transitional piece was painted when my mother came to visit in 1983 or 1984 and brought her watercolor books and supplies to pass on to me. We sat down at the kitchen table, and with her guidance I learned how color can be mixed on paper by applying layers of color. "The Cat is Not Amused" was the result of that session. I have not been able to adjust the colors so that they are true in this reproduction. This is as close as I can get.

My mother, born in 1916, had dreamed of being a writer since her childhood, inspired by the character, Jo, from the book, LITTLE WOMEN, by Louisa May Alcott. My mother attended the University of Minnesota for one year after graduating from high school, during which year her mother was dying of gallbladder cancer. After her mother died, my mother moved to California with her father, her older brother, her sister-in-law and their young daughter. In California, my mother went to business school and worked as a secretary until her marriage to my father.

As I understand, my mother was writing poetry and short stories from at least her early 20s until 1964, when she wrote the following sonnet:


The Inspiration came. It had its birth
Somewhere in Time - no special shining hour.
I've searched for words to dignify its worth
And find in speaking it has lost its power.
Yet something goads me on. The Hound of Heaven?
(Or selfish Pride that slyly begs applause?)
If but my thoughts would rest, like bread to leaven,
The still small Voice within might bade me pause
And quietly perform God-given tasks,
Return to Him the gifts bestowed on me,
Forgetting Self . . . . No . . . . Something strong still asks,
Repetitive, "What means Gethsemane?"
The Inspiration fled. Was God its source?
So be it.
Then rich I am for having felt His force.


In 1966, she revised the sonnet, crossing out the last three lines and writing in pencil:

The answers rise and fall like waves. I wait.
Then blindly stumble on towards heaven's gate.


Around 1964, my mother began taking watercolor classes. In 1967, she abruptly stopped going to church. In the time before her death in 1994, she created beautiful artwork by way of silkscreen, stained glass, batik and Norwegian pattern knitting. She read widely throughout her life and enjoyed writing letters but after 1966 completely stopped writing poetry and short stories, turning her creative energies to the visual arts. I am grateful for her affirmation of me as both an artist and a writer.

Imaginary Brother as Botanist (1984)

Sarah Before Laughter (1984)

This drawing used to have a longer title, which I have been unable to remember and which included something about C. G. Jung and the lake beside which he lived. The drawing has always felt unfinished to me, even though I had it framed. It is one of the few drawings from this period which I still own. Something is missing. Maybe that is the point.