Imagining how a few different pieces look together…
Category: studio
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I have felt to become fearless, ruthless in my experimentation. I am doing things that once upon a time would have scared me, deeply. I am using gold leaf. I am trying to figure out whether this effect is too “sdolcinato” – too sweet, crafty, cheesy. But, I am forging ahead with it. I am doing things that might look ridiculous, but that is 100% ok, more than ok. I am sticking gold leaf down on wet paint – something that definitely should not be done. I am feeling like I am listening to that voice that is urging me to move forward. Sometimes in the past I was afraid of moving forward. Even with the new goat during the eclipse painting, I feel like maybe I should have left it earlier on. But there was a voice inside me telling me to keep carrying on. Ultimately, I do believe that that voice should be listened to.
This is Heracles who comes upon the stag after having chased it for a year. Tireless, the stag kept carrying on. The stag is said to have been “as large as a giant boar” with brazen hooves and although female, golden antlers. “Heracles pursued the deer for a year, until it collapsed in weariness and he was able to capture it.” “Artemis forgave him because he had not killed it or spilled a drop of its blood”. This painting takes place in the moment that Heracles comes upon he stag, the stag calling out in utter exhaustion. The painting looked good before I added in the gold leaf. I think I still want to change the gold leaf slightly – refining the shape of the antlers.
Adding in the gold leaf:
Experimenting with transparent colors on top of a transparent gesso ground that I mixed. Trying to preserve this diaphanous transparency which gives it levity and a spirituality; makes it breathe. Gives it atmosphere. An emotipnality, and a rawness.
And now, the experimentation of the paintings of the bulls:
Beginning to draw in pastel underneath the oil paint, on top of a gesso ground that I prebought. I am experimenting with the different grounds – I was using a gesso ground that I was mixing with a glue and with water up until now. While this pre-mix goes on beautifully, I think it might be too absorbent as when I ultimately start painting all of the paint gets absorbed straight into the surface, making my darks sink in. But I like the little splotches of ground that have dripped onto the surface. This is a prime example of the kind of process-related things that I am not running from, but heavily leaning into in my work. Being in the moment and letting the process show. Letting the process teach me instead of trying to drive the process too forcefully. Letting myself be surprised by the things that happen on the way, and letting that shape the outcome, instead of trying to forcefully bring about a result that I think will be the best, because that’s the way I imagine it and want it. I am fully committing to the process.
Now, on one of the panels I have covered it with a red background, and on the other panel with a gold leaf background that is heavily textured. This is the first time I am applying gold leaf, and I was getting extremely frustrated (likely because of other things in my life than because of the gold leaf). But I was still committed to letting the process guide me, and for me to guide it in turn. I am interested in the rawness that comes about when I stop trying to be perfect, when I am instead authentic. The gold leaf background has texture, is imperfect, but that reflects the concept I am trying to convey in this painting.
Later, with the bulls drawn in,
However, I was finding that I did not love the way the bull looked against a flat red background in the first panel. The idea of this painting is to paint in this red blood vomit that is coming out of the mouth of a bull, an image from a bullfight that I was extremely struck and hurt by. In the gold panel, there will be red blood coming out of the bull’s mouth, while in the red panel, there was meant to be gold blood coming out of its mouth. But I didn’t like how the red panel was looking, so I kept experimenting, wondering what it would look like if the entire bull was made out of gold. A part of me kept saying ‘don’t do that’, in part because one isn’t supposed to put gold leaf on top of oil paint that hasn’t dried, because it will prevent the
bloodpaint from drying in the future and could cause archival issues. But I said, who cares, I need to ruthlessly and fearlessly experiment right now. That feeling of getting my hands dirty, of fearlessly moving forward to see how something looks – this is a feeling that I didn’t feel so comfortable with in the past. The fear of making something that looks like shit, this was a hard thing to sit with in the past, but now I feel like I am moving towards this feeling, moving towards this outcome, like the goat moving towards the eclipse on the horizon. I am seeking this feeling, I believe that if I am having that feeling, something good must be happening, I am setting myself up for success in the future. I must be doing something right, I am *moving* something, stirring something. I am not stagnant. I am moving, like the goat on the boat. -
While I was working on this painting, I was inundated with doubt. Doubt about whether I was overworking it, mixed in with the doubt that leaving it at it is would be enough. That voice that tells me to keep going, and the courage to listen to it, is ever-evolving, and becoming more and more pronounced. When I don’t like something in a painting, I keep working. If I keep working, there is a reason.
Here are some recent thoughts from my paintings:
These paintings are about the suffering that we inflict on beings, animal beings. They are about pain, about the conflictual nature of ourselves – we have at the same time immense empathy and immense ability to cause pain. They are extremely emotional – I am leaning in ever more to the emotionality of my paintings. The emotionality and sentiment of sacrifice. They are about absolute cruelty. How does this cruelty relate to a higher power? Betrayal. How can we do certain things in the name of God?
These paintings, and most significantly these animals – recently, most often the goat, are also mirrors for ourselves, symbols. Visual metaphors representing ourselves, our truest and deepest fears, our relationship with a higher power, our alignment with the universe. In a personal sense, I have grown to understand the goat as a mirror for myself
Looking back at this painting, I see how subconsciously mirroring is becoming evermore present. I have rendered conscious this notion of the goat mirroring myself, a self portraiture of sorts – a way of utilizing the goat to imagine my own journey, to process the things that happen to me on a daily basis (the eclipse, witnessing the aurora borealis here in Italy, my wonderment with nature, solitude, relationship with God). Interestingly, the reflection of the boat on the water, the blue of the eclipse mimicking the blue on the boat, mirroring is also visually present in this painting.
In a more positive light, my paintings are also about gratitude. In this particular work, the goat is in motion – the goat is ever so slightly more in dominion over the boat – over his journey. The alignment with the eclipse, on the path of totality – suggests that the goat is being protected by God, guided.
In a way, this painting is about the scapegoat being empowered. The scapegoat empowering itself. He is another victim, but he seems to be going somewhere, floating, but also driving the boat to a degree. sailing off into the sunset, into the eclipse, into the unknown. I looked at The Waywanderer on the Sea of Mist for this painting, because that sense of mystery – of dominion and simultaneously being humbled, nature as the great unknown, the power and force of nature, looking out onto the horizon, reaching a viewpoint, the lonesomeness that somehow isn’t alone at all – I wanted to repeat this in my painting.
I have noted that I work well large. I really identify with the physicality of it – the freedom of gesture translates into beautiful mark making, and a freedom of my hand and arm. It feels good, right.
I have also been thinking about the notion of a painting as a window. This is a concept I came across in the book “Figure” by Riccardo Falcinelli. He talks about the advent of the square canvas, and how this propelled forward a notion of capturing a moment as a window, or portal, onto another reality. Where the confines of the painting end suggest the continuation of this word beyond the borders. I was aiming in this painting to achieve a sensation of blowing open a window, a portal, and seeing this. The greatness and vastness of this view onto the eclipse – almost competing for the foreground with the boat, as though the eclipse was coming forward. A sense almost of the eclipse growing, growing towards the viewer, in motion, moving, expanding.
In this way, this painting is also a view into another world. There is a sense of otherworldliness, although I want it still to be grounded in this universe. Like the painting of Iphigenia, it teeters on a line between this world and the next – that space between this realm and the next – just balancing on the edge. Looking beyond, yet still grounded, planted here. I often think about how I, like this painting, or this space in painting, inhabit the space between two worlds – I am simultaneously the outsider and the insider. I straddle the contemporary and the classical. I am neither here nor there, which means I am SIMULTANEOUSLY here AND there.
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Beginning of a very large painting
My preparation on the linen was very light and transparent, so the surface is extremely absorbent, and the darks are quite dull. I kind of like that effect, but I’m wondering if it needs more work. I feel it could be stronger.
I like the rawness of it. But I think it needs more contrast, to pop more. I think I can start by darkening slightly the water as a vignette. Although I feel that the value relationship is working with the sky right now. Maybe I can darken the goat and/or the shadow around the boat.
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This painting tells the story of the night of Zifar –
“
A delightful comic element
runs like a thread through the book and is obvious from the very beginning,
where the author tells of a curse upon the family of Zifar which decrees that
any animal that the knight rides will drop dead after ten days, certainly a
most unusual curse. I have been unable to find any curse even faintly
resembling it, unless we consider the biblical curse on Job which caused the
death of his cattle.
When one considers that the horse and the sword were the two most
valuable of a knight’s possessions, one can more easily understand and sympathize
with the unhappy lot of the Knight Zifar because of the curse under
which he lived. One can also understand the king’s concern over the expense
of replacing a horse every ten days as well.
The embarrassment to the knight and the expense to
the lord were intolerable. In medieval times the fame of a knight’s horse and
sword were inseparable from the knight himself. Horses were the most
coveted of all booty taken in battle, and surely must have been killed most
reluctantly by the combatants. A horse capable of carrying a heavily armed
and armored knight would be highly prized. If the horse was killed, capture
or death for the rider was imminent.
The Knight Zifar is very careful with the horses he owns, and when he
acquires a new one, he never rides it before the death of the old mount. The
Siete Partidas reinforces the importance of the horse to the medieval knight.
Under Law X, Part II, Title XXI, we find that:
Horses, armor, and weapons are things which it is highly proper for knights
to have of good quality, each according to its kind. For, since they are
obliged to perform deeds of arms with them, which is their profession, it
is fitting that they be of such a description that they can get good service
from them; and of the things with which they should be thoroughly familiar,
the knowledge of horses is of the greatest importance. [Italics mine]
In speaking with
his wife, the knight avers that “God endowed me, through His grace, with
special traits of chivalry that He did not give to any other knight of this
time.”
Mine is a painting of a cemetery of horses – with the Knight Zifar kneeling, in desperation, or praying, tot he left. There is a small mound with a cross, delineating an already buried horse. These horses represent the more recently deceased horses, and the desperation of Zifar in this no man’s land where they have fallen. This personal burial ground of the horses that he has touched – a cursed kind of Midas touch that brings death to the horses.
The top left contains the head of a horse, looking more gruesome – perhaps dead for longer? I think the colors are vibrant in this one, and the light effect seems to work strongly – it has an immediate visual impact, in my opinion.
These are the beginning stages of a painting of Heracles, who pursued a deer, a golden stag, for a year until he captured it. I will paint in the horns of the stag with gold leaf, for the first time. I am looking forward to experimenting with this material. I imagined a surreal landscape – with a moon that to me looks like a lunar eclipse – denoting a temporal moment of alignment, a coming together of things, a pivotal moment in time. The stag has his head tilted back in a call – a call that stags usually perform during mating, but here, it is meant to represent its desperation, its exhaustion at having been pursued, chased for a year. However, there is a stillness to the painting – it is not fast or overly emotional. The figure of Heracles is surprisingly static, contemporary – he is not the muscular, heroic Heracles. He is a shadow, a man, watching. I feel like this places it in a more contemporary context.
Some subtle details – which read more clearly in person – like the ripples of his shadow on the flat lands across the small stream, and the reflection of the red moon in the water behind him.
And finally, a painting of a Torero – a bullfighter – entering a Capilla – a chapel. this is a painting of a photograph I saw in a real bullfighting museum in Madrid. When I was looking at the photo, I knew that I wanted to represent not just the torero – this incredible moment in which he is entering into a chapel to pray to a higher power to be with him while he massacres a bull – another being – but I also wanted to capture the experience of viewing this as art, or viewing it as a performance – in the way we view bullfighting as the viewer. There is a detach from the moment – an encapsulation of it that, I hope, forces the viewer of the painting to analyze their own relationship to viewing this – a representation of it,
I like how I have captured the string on which the painting hangs, the small shadow behind the photograph dangling against the wall. The expression of angst, fear, conscience, as the torero enters the chapel. I painted this emotionally – and at first I wondered whether the expression was too pronounced, too intense – however now, after giving it some time (I am becoming better at giving myself time away from paintings and letting them sit – what Richard Schmidt calls leaving it to the “paint fairy”) I like this aspect a lot.
I am doing a fair amount of fast painting. I view these as sketches, even though they are paintings in their own right. I view them as sketches because they help me think out loud – to move from one large concept to another and explore all the middle ground between them. to linger on, to discover, to chase a concept – that happens in these smaller paintings. I think I paint well when I paint large – I view those as the large projects – also the ideas that feel big to me. There is a marriage between how big a painting is and how big the idea is.
Interestingly, with this painting, of the torero, I reutilized the same yellow as I did on the hospital chapel wall. A pastel yellow. It made me feel like I had come back full circle with this painting. Another unconventional experience seeking god in a chapel – another “absurd” – as some might see it – way of using the chapel. Does god come to us in these spaces? Can god come in ways, partially, if partially he is displeased by this blatant act of animal sacrifice? Is god there for the torero at all? completely? not in the slightest? only slightly? what does the torero find, when he goes in the chapel, if it is not god? can the bull pray to god? is god there for both the bull and the torero? what does the torero feel – and is this connection, this deep, convicted connection with god somehow “wrong”? or misinterpreted? who are we to say that what he feels is not god? is god therefore only within the individual? is god objective, or subjective?
Just now, as I was adding tags to these three paintings – which I did almost in sequence – I had an incredible realization. They are all depictions of heroes – Heracles, the torero, and Zifar. Heroes from different walks, times, and different traditions – from the Greek pagan tradition, to the catholic saint and knightly tradition (Zifar), and a more colloquial tradition- the torero – a hero of the people. All perform animal sacrifice – all are making oblations of animals for a higher power – in display of faith (the torero), devotion (Heracles) or connection to a curse (in the case of Zifar). In these paintings – there are always three presences – spoken or unspoken – man, the animal, and the higher power. That is what my work is about – this pained, cursed trifecta.
There is suffering in all of these paintings, desperation – the desperation of the stag Heracles has pursued, and Heracles’ seeming indifference – his coldness, his anonymity. Zifar’s unbreakable dependence on horses – his devotion to his knighthood (as Heracles is devoted to his heroism) and the stag in the Heraclean myth’s desperation. The torero – his internal desperation, his internal grief, shame, guilt – visible only to the viewer in this stolen moment in front of a chapel. Like a glimmer of his humanity – his frailty, his conscience coming through only in this painting. The rawness and instinct with which I am painting allows for this subconscious guiding to help these concepts emerge. My intuition leads me to these paintings, much of the painting is impulsive – but these emotions are so, so similar – this abstract, unspeakable, otherwise fleeting and inanimate emotion, captured if only for a second, if only within myself.
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These three paintings are inspired by a dream that I had a while ago. It was a dream that I had when I was in the middle of working on the large scapegoat painting. I had a dream that there was a goat, a sheep, I don’t remember, who was lead out onto a boat far out into the sea. He was trusting of the humans who lead him out. He was lead out on a little tugboat, attached to a larger boat. Then, all of a sudden, he was detached from the larger boat, on his little tugboat, and the larger boat started to pull away. I watched this from the shore, the look of utter betrayal on the face of the sheep, the fear, and the confusion – not understanding at all what or why this was happening. I watched him get pulled farther and farther out to sea by the tide, slowly being lifted up onto the waves. Slowly coming down onto the waves, until the waves got bigger. I was aware that he would eventually get swallowed up by the waves. I watched him and I watched the waves get bigger. He watched me the whole time, and I watched him – our eyes locked on each other. I have this image of him burned in my head.
Originally, I wanted to paint the scene directly, but I was finding it hard to translate into a real image. So I made a first painting, a sketch of somewhat, even though it is medium sized – that somewhat endeavored to begin to evoke the same emotion as the dream.
It should look like a goat, a baby goat, standing on a floating life raft, being swallowed up by a wave that is about to come, as he floats on the sea away from us. Thomas told me that it looks like he is standing on the shore and about to disappear into a hole. It bothers me when Thomas doesn’t understand my paintings. I want them to be read clearly, immediately. I read this perfectly clearly. Or maybe it just bothers me when he doesn’t understand my paintings.
I was somewhat happy with the result, but I felt that there was more to tell in this story. I wondered whether I should attempt to retell the story of the dream with an image that more closely resembled my dream visually, as opposed to just resembling it emotionally.
I ended up deciding to make a painting based on an account of a Greek ritual, a Dionysian ritual, I had read about during my research for the research paper. The excerpt tells of a ceremony within which the Argives would throw a lamb into a lake to honor, in sacrifice, the return of Dionysus from the underworld.
The excerpt reads as such:
“
The local Argive
tradition was that he (Dionysus) went down through the Alcyonian
lake; and his return from the lower world, in other
words his resurrection, was annually celebrated on the
spot by the Argives, who summoned him from the water
by trumpet blasts, while they threw a lamb into the lake
as an offering to the warder of the dead.“
I was stunned by this account. It is one of those accounts that touches me in a deep way. I wanted to recount this vision, this tale. An aquatic scapegoat, if we will.
One thing to note is that I am really experimenting deeply with the various preparations of my canvas. I always mount my own canvas, but often I use pre-primed jute. This is the material I use most. However, I have recently been experimenting with priming my own raw linen. I use a gesso mix that I make myself – with an acrylic-based glue, and water, in various amounts of opacity and thickness of gesso, and various layers, to achieve an effect of more white opacity beneath the first layers of oil paint, or rather to preserve the translucency and rawness of the raw linen.
With this particular canvas for the Argive sacrifice of the lamb in the lake, I decided to keep the raw tone of the linen fairly intact, only applying one or two coats of very thin gesso mix. Instead, in the canvas just above, there are more layers, to create a whiter base.
This then brought me to the painting that more closely embodies visually the image in my dream. I wanted this painting to be mostly white – a white environment around the goat – white sky and white sea, while the goat seems to slowly be receding, watching us.
I applied more gesso to here in layers, creating that white ground, but with some of the rawness peaking through in certain areas, which to me gives a poetic effect visually, a rawness, an authenticity, an honesty, a transparency – both metaphorically and symbolically, as well as aesthetically. Transparent in my intention and concept. Transparent in desire.
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I started out becoming interested in the myth of Cyparissus. I saw a sculpture of Cyparissus at the Accademia in Florence, after having looked at the David. This was one of the most exquisite sculpture I had seen (of Cyparissus) – in the cast room to the left of the David. The sculpture is of Cyparissus, the young boy in Greek myth who accidentally kills his favorite stag, and out of grief, begs Apollo to turn him into a cypress tree, so that he may grieve the stag eternally. The cypress tree leaks a watery resin, so the notion of the etymology of the tree is connected to this eternal idea of grief, a cry, tears, that are forever shed for Cyparissus’ stag.
This sculpture, is embodies essentially everything that I wish to convey with my artwork. The way the gentle hooves of the dead stag hold on to the human, the grief of the human, their embrace – so laden with grief, so charged, so intimate.
So, I kept looking back at this sculpture. The original in marble is actually in Lucca, just a 30 min drive from me, so I will go and visit it soon, perhaps tomorrow.
I knew that I wanted to make a painting inspired by this sculpture. However, when I started sketching ideas out, it became clear that I wished to move away from the male form in this painting. There is something that felt rigid about it, overplayed, too direct in its power dynamic and power statement in relation to the stag. I wanted something softer. So, I started looking at other sculptures. I found a sculpture in the same cast room at the Accademia that was beautiful in its gesture – a sculpture of Cleopatra with the snake. The back was stunning. I knew that this was the form I wished to show in embrace with the stag. But, why – what is the narrative with this relation of the woman to the stag?
I let my subconscious lead me a lot, so I started off with the painting, knowing for sure that it would lead me to a place that makes sense.
I knew I wanted to experiment with line making in this painting – I wanted the freedom to draw initially, and create long, swooping lines, I had done in the initial drawing I made of the stag hunt and then transferred – but this time I wanted the draw directly on the canvas, and have my first layers of paint influenced by these first lines – both in terms of gesture, and in terms of the hardness of the line underneath my first watery layers.
Experimentation with the effect of colored pencil underneath a watery first layer of the paint – the paint mixes beautifully over the colored pencil, creating new, almost watercolor-like colors, sometimes melting the colored pencil into it, and other times preserving the integrity of the line beneath.
So, I started drawing directly on the canvas –
I really liked the effect of these first lines – so gestural, and free, so expressive. I did consider, should I leave the painting like this? But I felt the desire to continue, and the desire to make a painting – and I felt perhaps the entirely story had not yet been told – in other words, I had more to say, more to show to this story.
So, I began to paint over my lines, focusing first on the sense of place – aiming to cover the canvas also – to show the landscape. I still find it very useful to focus on sense of place early on – in the very first passages (after having made a line drawing, in this case) – and essentially making a landscape painting underneath the layers to come, to really make sure that I know exactly where these characters are.
I liked how early on there was great expressivity to the mark making, great emotion to these vast open spaces, and the freedom with which I can paint – and express simultaneously. I have truly internalized how important it is to work broadly, generally, and then build one’s way towards the details – the more refined areas of the painting. From general to specific, as we learned in school. I have never felt this more true – and it also allows me to learn early on which are the aspects of “rawness” that I wish to preserve in the painting without going too far – past the point of new return. those little painting moments of freshness that to me, are beautiful – for example, the drips of paint that often happen when I am covering broad fields of color with watered down paint in turpentine – here, in the foreground, those drips of paint I found beautiful, and knew that they, in part thanks to a conversation with Thomas I had a while ago, are part of the narrative of these paintings, they are like tears, like a cry, a display of mourning, grief, built into the materiality of the canvas and the painting – a physical gesture to show an emotional truth in the painting. Now, reflecting back, I see that Cyparissus’ tears – even though the painting is growing away from that initial impetus learned about through the sculpture of the young boy and the stag – are present still in this painting. Those eternal tears of grief he wished to shed.
And so, the painting kept developing – the landscape becoming more prominent. But I knew that I was detached from the reason why I really care about this painting. In the past, with successful paintings I have made, I have been deeply, desperately attached to the concept. So, I knew I was to return to my research, to understand who this painting is about, and why.
I had read, while on the train coming back from Liverpool to London while I was there – the original account of the myth of Cyparissus by Ovid – the one that inspired many other paintings of this scene that I have now grown to love.
From Book X of Metamorphoses by Ovid:
Then came the cypress with its cone-shaped fruit: The tree was once a boy loved by Apollo,
God of the twangmg lyre and the bow.
And at that bme there was a stately deer,
Worshipped by nymphs who shared his neighbourhood, A pretty pasture called Carthaean Field.HIs eyes were shaded by broad-branchmg antlers Which shone in burmshed gold, and at hiS throat A collar breathed of many coloured Jewels;
Even at hiS birth he wore a silver crown,And glinting round hiS head and from his ears
Were strung the daintIest of Orient pearls.
The creature had instinctive faith in man;
He walked in homes where strangers kissed his forehead. All seemed to love him, but beyond all othersHIS sweetest lover was young Cyparissus.
Daily he led the deer to greenest pastures,
To drInk at fountains in Carthaean meadows.
He gathered VIOlets and pinks and daisies
To dress deer’s antlers In a wreath of flowers,
And then as If the boy were a bold rider
He’d mount the creature’s back or stroll beside him; Like a proud master with a dancmg stallion,
He fashIOned reins and bit of purple Silk
To lead the deer, caressing hiS soft lips.At noon one summer’s day-it was the hour
When the beach-yearning Crab stretched Wide its claws That turned to fire m the sun’s white heat-
The deer sank down to rest, to wet hiS lips
At a cool spring flowing in a wooded covert.
Not knowmg that the deer had strayed so far,
And glancing carelessly through shuttered leaves,The boy thrust a quick spear through the deer’s side, And when poor Cyparissus gazed and saw
The blood, the open wound, the dYing deer,
He knew his love was lost and wished to die. Phoebus said everything he could to cheer him – What did he leave unsaid? Nothing at all.He told him too much grief makes sorry faces,
To save hiS tears for deeper wells of sorrow;
But no, the boy said all he wished to do-
May Heaven help him!-was to cry forever.
Tears drained the manhood from his slender thighs, His fair white body took a greenish tint;The waving hair that used to hide hiS forehead Grew upward like a green and thorny tower.
He was a tree whose shapely topmost branches Stared at the stars across the circling mght.
Apollo Sighed, hIS own eyes filled WIth sadness, “You whom I weep for, shall share grief With others, And you shall stand wherever mourners are.”Still on the notion of tears, this is from the account of Eurydice and Orpheus, in the same book, the story before. I have always thought that if I were to ever have a daughter, I would want to name her Eurydice, for how beautiful I find the account of Orpheus and Eurydice – how much it moves me.
“Then they say, for the first time, the faces of the Furies were wet with tears, won over by his song: the king of the deep, and his royal bride, could not bear to refuse his prayer, and called for Eurydice.
She was among the recent ghosts, and walked haltingly from her wound. The poet of Rhodope received her, and, at the same time, accepted this condition, that he must not turn his eyes behind him, until he emerged from the vale of Avernus, or the gift would be null and void.”
They took the upward path, through the still silence, steep and dark, shadowy with dense fog, drawing near to the threshold of the upper world. Afraid she was no longer there, and eager to see her, the lover turned his eyes. In an instant she dropped back, and he, unhappy man, stretching out his arms to hold her and be held, clutched at nothing but the receding air. Dying a second time, now, there was no complaint to her husband (what, then, could she complain of, except that she had been loved?). She spoke a last ‘farewell’ that, now, scarcely reached his ears, and turned again towards that same place.
Stunned by the double loss of his wife, Orpheus was like that coward who saw Cerberus, the three-headed dog, chained by the central neck, and whose fear vanished with his nature, as stone transformed his body. Or like Olenos, and you, his Lethaea, too proud of your beauty: he wished to be charged with your crime, and seem guilty himself: once wedded hearts, you are now rocks set on moist Mount Ida.”
Side note – I find this account so fascinating, also because of the parallels with Lot and his wife in the Bible, in the book of Genesis. – the notion of losing one’s wife, of not being able to look back at a burning city – there is so much overlap here.
*weeping*
So, I started to look at other accounts of deers in Greek mythology – of course – Iphigenia and the Trojan war. There is a play by Euripides – that I am now reading, titled Iphigenia at Aulis. It is part of the same trilogy by Eurpides within which Bacchae was originally performed. Interestingly, it gives an account focused around Iphigenia’s experience of becoming a sacrificial victim during the Trojan war. Aeschylus’ account of the events in his Oresteia focus very much on Clytemnestra – Agamemnon’s wife and Iphigenia and Electra’s mother – as the villain – having murdered Agamemnon – and the revenge Orestes, Iphigenia and Electra’s brother, must seek on her – and the ensuing matricide that occurs. However, as I have read – the account of Iphigenia at Aulis forces us to remember that – Agamemnon killed his own daughter, much to Clytemnestra’s horror – and her grief is what causes her to murder her husband – kind of understandingly so.
But the humanization of Iphigenia in this account is what interests me. How does Iphigenia feel – what is the arc of her character’s journey that brings her from fear, into willingly submitting herself to sacrifice by her father, to allow the Trojan ships to set sail? But I also realized that this account provides a reason for Artemis’ rage towards Agamemnon. Agamemnon had killed a stag that she adored – causing her to paralyze the winds upon the shores of the Trojan ships, and preventing them to set sail for Troy to reclaim Helena. The entire account of Iphigenia at Aulis follows the character arcs and evolutions of not only Iphigenia – but also Agamemnon, he too is humanized, in a way, as his wavering and doubt, his utter fear in committing infanticide in the name of war, is brought to the surface through the pages. Even Achilles is shown to be a character full of emotion (not unlike in the Iliad itself) – whereby he actually tries to stand up for Iphigenia and prevent the Trojan troops from sacrificing her, in heroic fashion, until he understands just how dangerous this role is, and backs off. It is a fascinating account all around.
However, the desperate embrace of Iphigenia and the stag carries even further weight – first of all, they are both the sacrificial victims of Agamemnon. Somehow, they have ended up in this space, together, afraid, watching a shore from which the Trojan troops have already set sail – abandoned, in a place hovering between life and death, an afterlife, so to speak.
And Euripides plays with this parallel in his own way. The final lines of the play, in some versions, see the body of Iphigenia actually become a stag on the shore – a kind of way to rectify the brutality of her defiled body and summon the notion of metamorphosis through death. Metamorphosis is in fact something that I have been thinking frequently about. Thomas and I were listening to the 5 movements of Philip Glass’ Metamorphoses – and we realized, fascinatingly, that movement 1 and 5 are identical. They are the same movement, perhaps save a few moments, but we did not notice them. I read this is a statement that that which changes, that which goes through a process of metamorphosis, returns to its “original state”, as Thomas called it. What then is to be said about the metamorphosis that occurs through death? Why does Iphigenia transform into a stag – an animal, a purer essence of existence? Is this a return to nature, is it the nature of her true essence, her true soul – her soul, her anima – the animal? Is Agamemnon’s killing of the stag that precedes the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia foreshadowing in Iphigenia at Aulis – or is her transformation into a stag at the time of death a call back to this moment – a way for the story to metamorphose back to its original state – a kind of long, circular, cyclical process of transformation?
In a case, the myth of Iphigenia embodies the ideas that I wish to convey in my work. Her fear, the notion of being betrayed by her father – the way Jesus is betrayed by his father, the way the scapegoat is betrayed by its father – the human; as Ovid writes of the deer – “The creature had instinctive faith in man“. This torn, fraught relationship between animal and man, and between man and man, and man and himself. Iphigenia’s fear of death, her needing to confront that, alone, the way we are always alone in death – and that feeling of being utterly alone in death, just as the scapegoat embodies. Also, this account of Iphigenia at Aulis begs my question – does Artemis really wish for Iphigenia to be sacrificed? She balked at the ruthless killing of her favorite stag – is the notion of sacrifice – human and otherwise – human and animal, a gross misinterpretation of the gods’ will – just as it is believed to be so in relation to a Christian God? Both Iphigenia and the stag are sacrificial victims.
Also, the landscape in this painting is powerful, and important for me. I feel that I have been successful in creating a place that feels wet, crying, a kind of extremely euphoric place – that is not part of this life, but still deeply connected to this life. She seems to be in this place, a metaphysical and metaphorical place, that is just beyond the realm of the physical world – she looks out onto the shore that the Trojan army has just set sail from. She is still there, on that shore, now left completely alone, for eternity – with a dead stag in her arms for company. The way they keep each other company – yet, are they the same being? Are they one?
What does this eternity feel like. The knowing that she will be there forever, to think back on the way she has been betrayed, outcast, left alone forever, cast out. My work is, as I have realized, so much about this notion of betrayal.
The winds have picked up – the ships have set sail. This is the place where she died, this is the place where she will be forever.
This is the place of the scapegoat – the place that teeters between the real and the metaphysical, the place that exists when we “peel the curtain back” as Giorgio de Chirico once wrote. The place of death, but also the place of life. The place of utter solitude – but within which perhaps we can feel the most deep, and desperate connection with God, or whatever that concept is.
The scapegoat is just as much about this place, to me, as it is about the actual religious tale of symbolism in the name of Jesus Christ, as it is about the betrayal of man unto an animal – a victim, as it is about community, ritual, history. It is about this place – the place of the Dead Sea, the desert in my own scapegoat painting – here, the shore of Iphigenia and the stag. It is a place that I am convinced is in our subconscious, at least in mine. A place that is about our deepest selves. A real place that we know, that we collectively and intuitively remember – because it is engrained into our DNA.
*Cypresses don’t grow back when pruned too aggressively
*Cypress trees aren’t pointed unless we bind them
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I have been thinking a lot of about “place” when it comes to my work. A sense of place. Often I find that the places that I know, that I conjure in my mind and spirit’s eye, are the ones that come across most intensively and effectively in my paintings. This new painting is inspired after a place that is right by my house. It is a big ravine into a “canale” below – a sort of canal that winds through the mountains. This place has a lot of myth around it – there is the story of the man who escaped Nazis, throwing himself into it and running for his life after they shot him in the leg and chased him, trying to kill him. There are the cats that climb onto trees over the canale, and then can’t come back down because they are afraid, and have to be rescued by firefighters. Thomas, my boyfriend, once told me about how they actually “perform” the “battuta” – the group “caccia al Cinghiale”, or the boar hunt. Battuta literally means to hit something, something that is hit. This concept of the battuta, the group performative ritual of hunting, even as a performative and spiritual practice, has informed a lot of my work. This particular painting is inspired by the descriptions of the battuta that Thomas gave me. Men encircle a boar into a “canale”, or some sort of ditch by chasing it into it with dogs. Then, when the boar tries to escape, and cannot, they shoot it. I just imagine the boar falling back into the ravine, helpless, trying to gasp his or her way up the sides of the ravine to its death. Utter terror. I wanted this painting to somewhat evoke simultaneously the vulnerability of the boar, as well as the smugness and joviality of the hunters by contrast. I wanted them to feel cool, like they are performing, for each other, or for a higher power?, their nonchalantness. I wanted to hone in and meditate, once more, as I did with the stag hunt, on this circular fervor – this circular composition. A circle as the origin of life, something that ends but also begins, a form that calls in spirituality and unity. A ritual.
I think back on the scapegoat paintings, and I wonder, where is that place? Is that place somewhere within me? Is it the lowest place on earth, like the Dead Sea – is it a place that we all know, intuitively, primally? I feel that that the place, not only the emotion or the shape of the goat, in that painting, is so recognizable to people on an intuitive level.
I am also thinking about who I am painting for. Am I painting for an audience? Like the hunters? Is there performance, and if there is, how do I eliminate it? Recently, after these paintings, I feel like I am painting for myself, or rather consciously painting for myself and trying to eliminate acts for others. But, why? Is that selfish? I feel that perhaps because, as Ernest Hemingway once said, I can only, or rather my “duty”, is only to paint (or write, as Hemingway wrote), the truth, and to know that truth well. I can know my own truth. I can try, earnestly and intensively, to tell that truth, but I cannot paint that which I know. I must paint what I know? How to know more…
Some other themes that have surfaced in my work, ideas I have realized are repetitive are loneliness, solitude, the feeling of being alone, utterly alone. That feeling of being utterly alone, in death…returning to a place whence we came, entirely, and completely alone, in fear. How does that feel? I think constantly about how these animals must feel in their moment of perishing, in the wilderness, completely alone. Or not alone, but at the hands of impersonal humans and rabid dogs. What do those humans look like from their perspective?
Betrayal, this is another theme that is prevalent. The notion of, “how could you do this to me?”
Guilt- the feeling of having killed an animal, what does this feel like?
Longing – the longing of the animal.
Moreover, I am wondering whether I am looking at the animal as a symbol, or a reflection of our own selves. A relationship with ourselves, and a relationship with a higher power. Is the animal a symbol, or a “mediator”, as I wrote in my essay? I know there is more here, but I have yet to completely render it conscious, or internalize it.
Grief, weeping
Women killing animals, or holding dead animals (there is evidence of this in a new painting I will post soon). These often become self portraits. Why? Am I making a metaphor for victory, or for grief? For power, or losing power? For the feeling of murder.
Lastly, animal=anima. Soul.
The three paintings below are all more or less about the same theme- domestic animals that are lost in the wilderness. The first is from a story of a dog who escaped its home, and ran away into the mountains. It stayed away for 2 or 3 days, and certainly encountered a boar. It came down the hill 3 days later, the hill that leads to my house from the mountains. Out walking one morning Thomas and I saw drops of blood – stains on the cement and drops all over the leaves that covered the road – going down the hill. We knew that it had to be an animal that was injured. The dog ended up belonging to one of our neighbors and when they ended up at Thomas’ parents’ house his sister called the owner, who came to pick it up. There is something about the story – the valiantness of the dog, who escaped into the wilderness to be on its own, to be away from humans, and the way it limps back down the hill towards civilization, back to its captors. The relationship of the domesticated animal with the wild animal – wanting to encounter one another but hurting one another. Pure, utter unhindered violence.
The animals I am portraying have historical relationships with man, of domestication or hunting, and this has influenced their evolution, as it has ours. The interrelation and interdependence on one another in this sense. An intertwined, star-crossed history and relationship as old as man.
This one is a painting of a hunting dog who was lost during a hunt. It was lost for three weeks. Thomas and his father out on a walk in the mountains came across the dog. It had become emaciated, it had survived. But its survival was extreme. They had to carry it down the mountain as it could no longer walk. They called the hunters who reluctantly came to pick it up. Certainly it would have been thrown back into the pen with the other many hunting dogs that hunter likely has. To live outside, in the elements, always under the rain when it rains, under the sun when it shines. Eating amongst its brothers what is given them. Left free when they go on the hunt to experience this kind of violent liberation – an extreme catharsis of all emotions this animal must have, to be unleashed onto the wilderness and onto another animal. What an extreme existence. What did this animal feel? When it was alone, and had to fend for itself? What does an animal feel when it is alone? Who keeps it company? Is God there?
This was the first painting I did in this series, a simple dead cat, a scapecat, in a wilderness. It is the one I like the least, but I was warming up the concept, thinking out loud. Thinking in paint, this is the way I think of my work when it is sketchy. Thinking out loud – the work that is getting me closer to where I want to be going.