I've been mean and closed the door on Natalia. Natalia the Love Biter. The biter of elbows and chin and arm and nose. A purring chainsaw of pain. Natalia of needle sharp claws into my pillow thighs looking for a comfortable position. Natalia the Scamp. Sometimes I just have to say no to the cats. I am not the Chinese Emperor who cut off his sleeve rather than disturb his sleeping companion. No, I pick them up and move them out of the way. I encourage Nairobi to sit beside rather than on me because she makes my legs look like pages of Braille. When Matisse sleeps between the crook of my knee I have no compunction in rolling him to the outside. He weighs a lot. Having Matisse sit on my legs is like being weighed down by a furry boulder.
It has been raining steadily since last night. Although the cats are totally indoor cats, I suspect they get cabin fever when the rain brings the outside inside as a green gloom. I can almost hear them say, 'I'm bored!' Natalia doesn't usually notice whether I'm on the computer or not. She may come in and check out the bird tv through the window or hunt a wild fly on the pane, but sit on my lap? No, she's too busy. But this morning, my lap was a prize to be won despite gentle discouragement. Frankly, if she quickly found a position and went to sleep, no problem but being a rather large cat, she had to twist and turn and try this position and then that, digging claws in to steady herself. I removed her three times. She was like the boor at a party who just doesn't get it that you don't want to hear the fine details of his trip to the dentist. I put her out and shut the door.
Have finished, signed and framed the latest drawing. It's not pretty. It's not logical. But it has presence. It is pencil. A man's bald but beautifully formed head stares through his cupped binocular hands but the hands are joined at the elbow forming a sort of heart shape. Another pair of hands, striped and joined at the wrist form the bottom of the drawing. Massive shadowy shoulders frame the binocular hands. I should (oh, there's that word!) take a photo and try and get it up here but as I've used the word 'should' of course I won't. If I wanted to market my work I'd do so. It's still the work for it's own sake. These walls don't need any more pictures (although I've always admired the shot of Gertrude Stein's Paris salon which was hung with art from ceiling - and high ceilings at that - to floor) but when there's something on the board I breathe more easily. So I keep working.
Have started another work, coloured pencil. One day I sat in the chaise lounge under the poinciana tree and looked up. The sun coming through the branches, the green leaves and the orange-red blooms was a vision that I can never replicate. Yet I have to try. It's odd that artists know they can never truly recreate nature but are compelled to attempt it again and again and again. How frustrating to see the result of hours of work and know that it bears little resemblance to that golden kernel of joy that inspired its creation in the first place. When I looked up through the branches and saw the sky/tree/blossom/sunlight vision, I knew I would have to try. I'm not a plein air painter. I won't take the pad outside and try and copy what I see. I will try (and how impossible and at the same time laughable this is) to recreate the feeling it gave me when I first saw it. What else can I do?
I have copied many things; drawn people from life, copied images from photos, but the paintings which give the most satisfaction are the ones that come from my head. I read of artists who project a photoshopped image onto the canvas and then paint it in. That wouldn't work for me. In one sense it would seem like cheating, a paint by numbers exercise for adults. Trying to recreate the inner life is what interests me, even if it's only my interpretation of an image I've seen and then scrambled with memory and emotion.
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