Blue Madonna/A Portrait of Motherhood

BLUE MADONNA/A PORTRAIT OF MOTHERHOOD

Why do we do art, what motivates us as artists to do what we do? Joy, love, anger, pain, sadness...emotions and shared human experiences are certainly one of the things that motivate all artists.

An artist is like a sponge that absorbs experiences around himself/herself and then expresses them back to others using color, shape, texture, line and space. Dance, drama, music, poetry, and visual arts can elicit feelings that are difficult to express in any other way. Complex feeling can be expressed through art...think of the aria in the movie Philadelphia when Andy knows he is dying and has no other way to express the sheer pain of leaving life and loved ones, other than to play his favorite opera La Mamma Morta, at full volume, sung at by Maria Callas until it encompasses his whole being. Or think of the play a Street Car Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, when Stanley cries out Stella in a soul riveting pleading sob. Contemplate the ballet Swan Lake, its tender tragedy and love story. These are the ways artists interpret and give back our inexpressible emotions to us.

Aging of our parents and loved ones is not easy to look at and experience. It is a journey we all go on, unless a parent dies young. There are moments of joy, tenderness, and sadness on this journey. Everyday I go into my Mother's nursing home, into the alzheimer/dementia unit I am bombarded by sights, sounds and smells. I come away with feelings and emotions I do not know what to do with. The nursing home can be a drama of emotions on any given day. Adult children visiting alzheimer parents who no longer recognize them, patients who are robbed of their memory by dementia, the frustration of nurses trying to be patient when a patient screams and screams caught in a moment of confusion of where they are...sometimes it is no more that a tear sliding down a cheek or a head bent lost in a world of boredom...it is a bombardment of images and impressions. The smells of medicine, food, urine and antiseptics and the sounds of old movies droning away in the background effect other senses. One cannot walk away without feeling something and for an artist it is a hundred times so. Sometimes I think of Picasso's "Guernica" or Munch's "Scream" and then I think of Leonardo Da Vinci's pictures of aging or Renaissance pictures of Motherhood and religious icons.

I love this picture of my Mother, it is sad, it is tender, it is vulnerable. Mother is almost 99 now and at times aware and at other times not. She still knows me and my brother, she can still express her unconditional love she has always had for us. I have looked at this photo many times and felt a myriad of emotions. I have been reluctant to write and share because it is so close and personal to me. But like art ideas that come over and over to me, telling me they need to come in to creation, this one calls to me. It won't go away, I keep going back to this picture and thinking about it. Something about it seemed universal, beyond just an ordinary moment in the nursing home with Mom, it transcends the everyday to a shared human experience...it is persistent in my mind. What is it that I am being called to create, to express? Then I realized that the photo of my Mother wrapped in a blue blanket reminded me of Renaissance paintings I had seen before in art history studies and at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida that has a large collection of Renaissance paintings. The photograph of my Mother takes on an iconic form to me, the Jungian idea Motherhood as an archetype, as a perfection of love and sacrifice-for my Mother truly embodied those qualities.if

I know I will do an art work from this photo, from these experiences..but it has not yet completely formed in my mind as to how. But it keeps calling me, and I cannot ignore the call for long. I have thought about would my Mother mind me using pictures that show her in a vulnerable state, and I know in my heart she would not. She would tell me to reach out to others, help in anyway you can, touch others lives, give to others...that is the kind of person she is. So when I do this artwork it will be with her in mind, and with her guidance and love.

The Hand as a Portrait

The Portrait of the Hand

In the details of every day life are hidden moments we all share that form our world. They are so easy to miss and to overlook: a touch of compassion , a pat on the back of support, a hand held for comfort, a glance of understanding. Noticing these details are partially what make artists sensitive to the flow of life.

I remember my Grandmother's hands so vividly. She sat me down when I was about nine years old to teach me how to make her famous cinnamon bun rolls. She was a marvelous cook and the rolls were a family treasure. She just didn't realize she chose the grandchild with the worst memory! What I did remember were her hands: how they kneaded the dough, how she sprinkled the flour, how the rolling pin moved in her hands. I remember every detail of her hands, but not the recipe! I later drew her hands over and over. She was a strong woman, who was born in a covered wagon and lived to see the first moon shot. She could wring a chicken's neck, have fried chicken for supper and hold a baby gently at the same time. It was a tough life growing up on a farm and raising four children through a depression with a disabled husband. Her hands were broad, big boned and every wrinkle spoke her life's story.

In these photo's you see my brother holding my Mother's hands so tenderly and gently. This is a portrait that speaks volumes of Mother and son, aging and youth, compassion and sadness, and life reversing roles. Now 98 1/2 my Mother's hands still hold a graceful pose with great strength. If I had to capture my Mother's character in three words, it would be love, grace and strength. I believe her hands reflect the same characteristics.

I remember studying in art history that master artists would call in their most skilled apprentices to do the hands in a painting. Leonardo Da Vinci did hands so well as an apprentice he excelled over his own master teacher. In renaissance paintings we see hands in a more stilted pose with meaning hidden in each gesture. It is interesting when one looks at hands against the backdrop of art history and various styles, how the presentation of hands has changed. It gives us greater insight into how we view ourselves as human beings through history.