Showing Up to Paint

I have been over flowing with paintings in the last couple months. In spite of a hectic schedule, many unexpected events and emotional clouts, I managed to carve out time to paint. Sometimes this had to be done with a very sharp sword.  I usually look forward to January and February as a time to hunker down in the studio and paint. The cold and the snow blowing outside the window as I turn inwards and draw from the images that emerge.

This year, there seemed to be all sorts of reasons to keep me out of the studio but somehow I managed to find a way back to those beloved brushes that help me to make sense out of this mad, crazy life.

There were times when I really felt that I couldn't cope with everything that was coming at me...here is the painting that resulted from a particularly emotional day.

Persephone's Ladder / 60" x 40" / acrylic on canvas

It was one of those days where a million emotions collided with a million thoughts and I felt briefly paralyzed, confused and unable to act.  I showed up at the studio anyway and through a blur of tears, literally threw paint at the canvas and clawed at the paint. You can read more about it here.

The next piece to emerge was this fierce warrior canoe, which actually began as a vertical tree but got carved into a canoe when I turned the canvas horizontally.  This piece contains the same strong emotions as Persephone's Ladder but now there is a safe harbor from the turbulence within the "canoe" and of course the moon is rising and guiding the way through a clear night.

Having navigated the rough seas of my own turbulent emotions, I now return to my landscapes with a new found energy and love of the earth, ever deepening as I come to terms with my own inner shades of darkness and claim them as part of myself.

As I conclude writing this post which began almost a week ago, I am happy to say that two of the most magnificent women just purchased this piece for their home. I am thrilled that the work reached out across the internet, drew them to my studio and into my life, for now I not only have the perfect home for this very charged and intimate painting but two inspiring new friends, who like the canoe, have helped to bolster me through rough emotional seas.

Eros Images

Here are some more images from the Eros show, this is my dear friend and sculptor, Luis Paniagua.  The piece in the middle, entitled Open Heart, is a collaboration between the two of us.  The three pieces on top are in the entrance room of the gallery and are: The Return Dance of Persephone, Luis's sculpture and a graphite drawing by Margo Chick, I think the three of them together are a wonderful celebration of Eros.

Encountering Persephone in my Beloved Studio

Wow! so much was happening last week, then I went and got one of those killer migraines that takes me into the depths of darkness for several days and nights and obliterates life for me, anyway, I am back!

Here's a couple shots of my studio at night, I love this studio. It is a huge industrial space in an old Simmons mattress factory filled with other artist lofts. I share this space with two other women artists who are rarely there the same time as me but when they are, it is great to share their creative energies. I can see the Montreal skyline which is particularly beautiful at night, as well as part of Mont Royal behind two big beautiful green copper church steeples. The Lachine canal is beside my building which is a wonderful place for walking or biking for miles. There is a farmer's market within walking distance and the "hood" is colourful and interesting with lots of beautiful parks and mature trees. Even in the winter I will break up painting sessions with a walk along the canal or to the market just to clear my brain and move my body.

My two Persephone paintings are side by side in the top photo. I have had them moved up north for the upcoming Eros exhibit and to make more room for the other paintings that are still inside me just bursting to come out onto the canvas. I have just exploded with ideas revolving around the figure. Yesterday I started five new small pieces integrating the figure into the landscape, just experimental for now but it is so exciting to feel this much potential bubbling up, God how I LOVE to paint!!! Everyday is a new adventure.

I've decided to title the two paintings up above, "Persephone's Descent" and "The Return Dance of Persephone" because somehow the two pieces are related even though they are quite different in execution. Both pieces speak to me of the divine feminine and the results of her repression in both myself and our culture. How the "feminine" is in all of us, male and female, and how undervalued her qualities are much to all of our detriment. The innocent girl, Persephone descends into Hades every year to be nourished by death and decay and ravished by the king of the underworld only to return refreshed and renewed every spring as a powerful, sexual woman who walks the earth with confidence and strength...a cyclical balancing of light and dark. Embracing our shadow sides and releasing all that carefully repressed energy into bold, bright colours and whirling shapes. One of the line's in Louise Gluck's poems on Persephone says that Persephone doesn't even know what winter looks like only that she is the cause of it.