Fourth Sister

In this last piece in the series, “Fourth Sister” there is a lowering of the pyramid with a large eye shape, the eye of the observing mother. She is there as a witness ,to start the realignment in the balance of the world. For the planet, is very far from being balanced at this present time and as humans, we are faced with the possible extinction of the species , maybe she will be left to correct this imbalance without us.

The crystal shapes ,function almost as windows into a world not yet created. A world where equality exists, where mankind and the planet can find a way forward. The prism is still there , not fully activated. There is a shift into a more ethereal colour ,as we proceed into a time of change. The rows of fetuses get more faint in colour ,as the possibility ,that mankind may not survive comes into question.

Third Sister

The third epoch continues strongly with the similar symbols of prisms and eye shapes. Eyes are an interesting shape, placed vertically they become vaginal shapes. The eye of the observing mother , from where all of humanity is birthed.

The feathers flow , they come from the “Fourth sister “ and flow right back to the beginning , travelling from the right to the left side. They have always been there, through all of the darkness of this world there is also light. The female energy has always been there. There is a circularity to time and existence.

The battle between dark and light ,will be won, by the weight of one white feather. The feathers in my series are pouring in from the future ,to reassure humanity that, light always wins.

Second Sister

The pyramid remains strong, the hierarchy of the patriarchy comes into its own in “Second Sister”. The colour scheme is deliberately richer in tone. After the creation aspect of the” First Sister” the second epoch continues. The hierarchy is subverted by the female energy of feathers, fetus ,honeycomb, and the watching eye shapes .

The prism is a new shape for me, and although it is also a pyramid ,it may represent the revealing , the change in the nature of the light, to reveal its component parts. I haven’t fully explored yet what a prism does — refract the light and break it down into the rainbow of colours . This refracting reveals that within white light ,there is so much more . I plan to explore this further in the future. These prisms intimate ,what is to come.

The fetuses gain strength, instead of the more ghostly aspect of the “First Sister” they are more defined .as mankind comes into its own. The feathers swirls and form a energy vortex on the left side of the piece.

First Sister

The beginning of this epic four part series, started with a diptych of a pyramid way back in 2016. I put it aside as I couldn’t make the piece work. It continued to expand ,however ,as I added two more pieces of paper to the diptych. Then the four original pieces of paper, became sixteen , as the piece grew. I concluded that the subject was a lot larger, than I had originally thought.

“The Four sisters series” is probably the largest work I have completed ,and had been very complex. To work at this scale and have the work all be related was a nightmare of epic proportions. It felt like I was corralling chaos. I would like to see them displayed in a purpose built room, one on each wall, with the entrance between the first and fourth sister.

“First Sister’s” narrative is dominated by the huge white shape that explodes. I got interested in an image of a black hole and a new theory to explain them. As well as sucking in matter , black holes may also birth ,new parts of the universe ,by spewing out matter. The first panel is the chaos, that maybe the black hole comes from.

Pyramid

So I started a piece way back in my last studio ,2016, I was trying to tackle the tricky idea of male and female energy. We have all existed in a Patriarchy for the last few thousand years, in the last few hundred years ,the attitudes represented by this system have become very difficult ,for the planet and its inhabitants.

When I say male and female energy I do not mean men and women, I mean the dualistic energy in all of us. We have both, as Jung said ,calling this the anima and the animus.

I chose for my symbol of male energy the pyramid, as it is very hierarchical. The top of the pyramid has space for only a few, and represents the way the world is currently organized. Power lies at the top as does most of the worlds wealth.

For female energy I chose moss, it is linear and covers pretty much everything given the right conditions. It represents grass roots, spreading to wherever it is needed. As a stand in for moss ,as it is difficult to visually depict ,I have also used feathers , dust ,honeycomb, fetuses.

I read Martha Ballard’s diaries, she was a midwife on the East coast of the US in the 1700’s. She describes a time when birthing babies was a female occupation, right before male doctors took it over as a lucrative proposition. She describes such a different time, everyone’s work loads were huge, not only make the meals , but grow the food, make the clothes but also grow the flax. A lot of these operations were communal as was midwifery-a group of women attended a birth-the most experienced one was called the midwife, but everyone went through a process of being trained informally. She talks about how many people she had relationships with as she was often paid in kind ,or by having help in her households endeavours. Her birth stats were compatible with today’s birthing numbers.

When the male doctors took over, it was much more straightforward in terms of a cash transaction and the birthing mortality rates plunged ,as forceps and more intrusive instruments were used .Interestingly the midwife’s connection with the community, were very involved, over time she would have connections with everyone in the area,the doctor by contrast came to the birth , was paid and went home.

This book really informed my feeling about how connected women are to their communities, how the female energy works, although as a disclaimer ,none of us really know, what it would be to live under a more dominant female energy and the goal at this point of human development is equality.

Layering

Thinking more in depth about my process of layering and questioning why I use this technique. It seems so natural for me, it’s a way of accepting the initial images I may use to start a piece and instead of covering over those beginnings I chose to add and that in effect can transform the original marks. It’s a difficult process to describe, as its very intuitive for me.

Some of the time I am deliberately trying to deal with trauma , a layer puts a distance between the unpleasant issue and me currently. Sometimes I do this layering as a way of turning the initial drawing into something that looks right to me.

I have had a recurring issue with the pyramid shape for a long time. I recently found a drawing from the 1980’s that shows this. Some years ago I tried to do a piece with a pyramid that just went nowhere. Recently, I got it out again and worked on it some more. For me the pyramid represents the Patriarchy , chosen because , it’s the perfect hierarchical symbol. I tried to find a symbol for the female energy in the world and came up with , moss , feathers, honeycomb, the fetus.

I started another smaller pyramid shaped diptych and as it developed ,the gun also seemed to be the perfect representation of male energy. The piece is so new, that I am still digesting it. The crystal/cage shape makes me think of blood diamonds and the children in cages, on the southern US border.

The first sketch below is the drawing from the 1980’s and the second is the just finished image.

Coincidence

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted independently by a French guy and an American who lives in Hungary. They tracked me down and both wanted me to do a similar thing , a cover for a CD. Let me explain what led them to me, in the early 1980's I did a number of record covers as they were then known, later CD covers and lyric booklets and other stuff ,for several bands, the "Young Marble Giants", "Weekend ", "The Gist" and later when I had moved to the US, the "Magnetic Fields"

For Weekend I did the album cover "La Variete", some singles covers, a lyric booklet also I did a backdrop they used for a photo shoot and a TV appearance. These various covers seem to have been really beloved by fans, who also love the music. I actually had a few fan letters.

With this request to do two new CD covers I looked through my box marked sketchbooks and found some from that era. Unfortunately all the drawings I did before I left for the US seem to have disappeared. All the many drawings I did of the "Young Marble Giants" on tour in Europe , the UK and the US seem to have gone. I managed to find some images, that I think will work for these new CD's. Quite a coincidence two such requests in the same. This blog should have been posted in July 2016.

Jean-Michel Basquiate

I have been thinking ,about the paintings of Basquiate, recently. He was such a master of taking graffiti art to another level. He was around in New York city exhibiting ,when I was at RISD, he died in 1988 at the age of 27, of a heroin overdose.

The amazing thing about his work is the freshness, influenced by graffiti I am sure, but he knew when to stop. Many have tried this path to a kind of boldness and a use of mark making that looks deceptively simple. He was such a master of his craft.

So thinking about my work , I will draw something that at first sight seems very satisfactory , over time those initial marks just don’t hold up. I feel the need to add complication and layers. I had an epiphany about why I need to cover up the image, yet I so admire Basquiate for being so bold— he lets an image stand. I do however acknowledge that I am seeing his finished work not the process he took to arrive at that image.

For me ,the desire to add layers often comes out of pain and the desire to cover over some trauma, to present another path .I show here ,a recently finished triptych where I deliberately made a large drawing on tissue paper, of all the traumas in my recent life— including moving up here to Oregon. I used this as a basis for several pieces — cutting them apart and reassembling with the addition of the virus imagery. This piece is called “The Floating World”

Divinity

As I was working on my "Homage to the Garden of Earthly Delights" I had a realization. Using the vaginal shape three times in the piece, with the appearance of a landscape through the shape , made me realize that the vaginal is a literal doorway. How amazing  is this gift of bringing a new life into this world . Vagina's act, almost as mythical wormholes from another dimension, mythical because wormholes don't really exist, but wormholes really are the best description . This being that is generated ,it is really from another dimension or where exactly does it come from? Women are capable of bringing not only a new being into their bodies, but of growing and gestating this being, to a point of independence. This is how after all we propagate the species.

No wonder women ,and their amazing gifts of reproduction ,were treated as goddesses in prehistory, before man realized their part in the process. It must have seemed like even more of a miracle , than it is now.

What we need in this world is more regard for the preciousness of life and the part we women play. I have used the imagery of the fetus in my work and its always seen as unusual. This frankly amazes me ,and speaks to how much ,males set the agenda of what is important subject matter in the art world.

Thoughts about Guston

So why have I be thinking about Philip Guston a lot lately. The first time I ever saw his work was a retrospective at the Whitechapel in London in 1982. I knew nothing about his work previously. I remember being so startled by his large scale paintings. I had no response at all, it was like looking at something with no reference points- I was dumbstruck. Later I realized, what an impact his work had on me and how truly monumental it was.

A lot has happened for me since I moved out of my studio in Upland, California in October 2016. I have had some medical issues , a detached retina being the most serious, and we have moved to Portland Oregon after living in California for 25 years ,it has been somewhat of a culture shock. Now after all the moving ,I have a huge studio and am beginning the process of working again and finding my feet in a new place.

I have started doing work about the five senses. I have also finished a piece that I brought with me based on the "Garden of Earthly Delights: by Hieronymus Bosch. I started looking at the structure underlying Bosch's triptych. It struck me that there would not be a garden of earthly delights without the five senses to appreciate them. So my quest has been combined, how can I visually express what hearing , seeing , touching , tasting and smelling might look like?

My approach is to start with some loose, almost cartoonish drawings of the parts of the body that are the centers of the various senses, which brings me back to Philip Guston. He uses the cartoon vernacular to show a disembodied head with a cigarette and a plate of chips and calls it "Painting ,Smoking , Eating". Below is the finished triptich loosly based on the "Garden of Earthly Delights"