PAPER DOLLS
I AM MY OWN DISCO
(in progress)
36" x 48"
Last weekend at my studio/gallery, multiple people asked me why I fill up every fraction of space on the surfaces I paint. This is a question I am frequently asked and which I even ask myself. I paint what comes out of me, dictated by some unconscious drive to say something with art that I have had since my earliest conscious memory. My memory may be conscious, but my painting is not. I love negative space. I respect and appreciate negative space. I enjoy the aesthetics of negative space. But . . . I don’t know how to do negative space. Or rather, negative space is not what comes out of me. When I paint, every corner, nook and cranny, weave and whorl get covered with paint. And then more paint and then perhaps some additional materials. And then maybe I’ll throw some words into the mix with some writing scribbled on top of the paint and other stuff.
I have one possible answer to the question that I offer. Unconsciously, I am compelled to fill up every space as an act of reparation. A repair job that never quite gets the job done. I am trying to fill the holes in my life. Trying to close the gap. In the moment when I am painting, when my hand is wrapped around that long-handled brush sweeping fiercely across the canvas, everything is right in my world. Or, I am attempting to make everything right. I am performing the miraculous. I am rewriting history. Turning back the clock. Resurrecting all that is missing inside me and sealing it tight into paint, not leaving any room for it to leak out. All the missing/stolen/erased/killed people, places, and things that left holes in my life are momentarily fixed and found inside the paint. My paintings are fix-it jobs.
Then I stop painting, and . . . the holes are still there. So, I start a new painting . . .
People also ask me why I don’t stop and just let the painting be but instead I keep reworking it, changing it (sometimes with no trace of its previous self). That unconscious place inside me is apparently at odds with itself. It wasn’t to find what’s missing and lock it in place, but it doesn’t want my paintings to be fixed into one thing. I am continually driven to rework and reinvent my art and am never settled with it being settled.
LAST TEAR
(in progress)
24" x 36"
My answer? Maybe I don’t want things to come to an end, don’t want them to be finite. I don’t the lost parts I found to be just one thing and only one thing. Perhaps I change the paintings as a way of averting being defined by my history. I paint my history, yet I don’t want to be solely defined by that history, so I keep changing the paintings. I don’t want my identity to be solely defined by my history. I
Then again, maybe I change them in another act of replacing what was lost. Maybe I am giving the paintings what was taken from me when I lost in my childhood. Fear, danger, ever-present dread, terror, and persistent threat darkened every corner of my childhood and erased the places where glitter and sparkly magic should have shined. With that erasure, I lost my childhood, my body. I lost me. Maybe I am finding me and giving her some glitter now, hoping it’s not too late.
In many ways, I have always used art to try fix the unfixable in my life. In one of my current series PAPER DOLLS (and many other creations I’ve concocted), I am replacing the irreplaceable, but this is in no way a conscious act. I only figured it out after the fact, and I am just guessing at the answer.
These paintings aren’t just reworked with paint. They ‘ve been given the extra special edition treatment. I’ve added stuff upon stuff upon stuff to the paint. Many of my paintings from the last 40 years or so have extra stuff -old photographs, jewelry, hardware, words, doll parts, clock parts, silverware, watches, ribbon, sequins, broken mirror, buttons, safety pins, glitter, gemstones, razor blades, aluminum foil. The list of “stuff” is long and vast, and the possibilities for more “stuff” are infinite. PAPER DOLLS have
pretty stuff” (glitter, colored lights, glass beads, silver charms) with an edge of danger (sharp nails, bolts, screws, and wire). I think that unconsciously, I am giving myself the pretty glitter I never got to experience as a girl while at the same time acknowledging my history and giving myself a layer of protection, so the “pretty” doesn’t get harmed. Of course, the deformity of the women/girls is pretty obvious . . .
People also ask me why I paint people. Yes, my paintings are figurative. But in many ways, the people are just a surface for me to indulge my love of excessive color and patterns. My paintings are as much about the interplay of color, shape, and pattern as they are about the humans. Colliding patterns and colors excite me and make me happy. They light up my world. And the more they are piled on top of each other and create explosive collisions, the happier I am. Don’t limit me! I like collision in my art and in my clothes. One of my favorite things to wear is my vintage “psychotic squirrel” men’s button-down shirt paired with vintage men’s green plaid pants. Why would anyone want to wear only one pattern when you could wear 25?
Thinking about these things jogged a memory from the trenches, something I hadn’t thought about in many years. When I was a little girl, my number one prize possession was my collection of handmade paper dolls and fashions. I made my own paper dolls and meticulously created their fashions. Since I grew up in the 60s and early 70s in San Francisco, I was inspired by the fashion of the time. I’d say Jimi Hendrix was probably my biggest influence. I would love to have Jimi Hendrix’s closet and everything in it. Please.
A DIFFERENT SHADE OF BLUE
(in progress)
24" x 36"
My paper doll collection lived in a cigar box under my bed. I spent hundreds of hours working on it. I worked on those dolls and their fabulous fashions from the time I was about seven until I was twelve - five years, nearly half my life at the time.
The fashions were anything but simple. Each individual piece was hand-created: belts, blouses, skirts, earrings, boots, dresses, pants, tights, hats, etc. Every single piece had to be placed on the doll with all the other individual pieces with little hand cut folding tabs. It was a painstaking process, but the possibilities were infinite.
When I was a kid, I could do not right. Wrong became a state of being, and that state meant that I spent a lot of time in my bedroom “on restriction” for the various infractions of my wrongness. The only good thing that came out of a childhood spent largely on restriction is my love of art and music. My AM/FM radio, portable record player, 45 collection, and various colored pencils, pens, and paper helped me survive my childhood. And I created paper dolls to keep me company, in all their fabulous paisley polka-dotted floral plaid psychedelic plaid splendor.
Unfortunately, my paper dolls “went travelling” which was my mother’s expression for throwing away everything that belonged to me, everything I made, my life, my body, my childhood. It just crossed my mind this week that on some level perhaps my paintings are my new paper dolls. I recently grouped three large self portraits together for exhibit: A DIFFERENT SHADE OF BLUE, LAST TEAR, and I AM MY OWN DISCO. After remembering that old cigar box, I have decided to call the series PAPER DOLLS, collectively. Eventually, I will add CATECHISM, but it is presently in its eighth incarnation. It is hanging in my studio. A man stopped in over the weekend and gave me a long and detailed analysis of the painting. I will share both the painting and his thoughts soon . . .
Sadly, I can’t show you my original paper dolls, but their memory is making an appearance at FACE TO FACE PROJECT. The paintings are still “in progress” (though they look complete), but then again, they always will be unless they “go travelling” or get adopted to a good home.
Here is a jumbled mix-up of pieces of songs and the paintings:
Click to view