How the grandchildren I do not know have changed my artistic perspective.
As artists, we’re taught to see, observe, interpret. We consider line, shape, color and the relationships between them. We look deeply into the subject matter. We back up and look again, now considering the broader context – and more. Then, we paint.
But what happens when we’re forced to paint what we cannot see? What we have lost. All that might have been in view, but is now missing.
Years ago my relationship with my daughter fractured. It was a loss that deepened when she became a mother herself, without me. Suddenly all the usual subjects, all the familiar avenues of an artist’s thought before mixing paint and reaching for a brush, felt empty.
Art, Grief and the Family I Hold in the Dark
For more than twelve years, my work in the studio has not been peaceful. It has been a battlefield -- and a sanctuary. When a sudden, cruel silence separated me from my daughter and the grandchildren I have never been permitted to know, the grief settled deep into my body.
As an artist, I had no choice but to paint my way through it.
My work became emotionally dark. I found myself looking beneath the surface of things, into the tide pools of The Boneyard, layered with kelp, broken shells, and bones. I painted Vortex, capturing the dizzying, cruel velocity of a life flying into pieces.
To see these images enlarged, and to see them in context, visit the Abstracts gallery.
“Vortex”
“The Boneyard”
These artworks, and many others, are not gentle, because profound loss is not gentle. But beneath the darkness of much of my art is my bedrock devotion to truth and loyalty.
Their Strength is My Strength
When my world fell apart, I looked to the most important people in my family history – those who were solid, loyal, and always there. Those who in any circumstance were strong, steadfast and unwavering.
My first series of thirteen paintings, The Ghost Army Series, captures the grit, spunk and sorrow of my father’s service in the Ghost Army as an officer during World War II. They show very young men doing their duty, often in the face of pure horror and tragedy. The series includes a portrait of my dad standing guard at a Displaced Persons Camp at the end of the war.
See this painting in its entirety — and read the story of my father’s service in the Ghost Army — in the Ghost Army gallery.
I painted many portraits of the joyful young woman who was my mother. She was the powerful glue that held our family together. She was also one of the best friends I ever had. Together, she and my father created our unbreakable family unity -- along with the expectation that it would always hold.
See this painting in its entirety, and read about my remarkable mother, in the Portrait gallery.
Meanwhile, I wondered about the idea of evil, and I tried to understand the cruel reality of the darkest parts of human nature. I actively sought authors who wrestled with this theme -- James Lee Burke, for example, and C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. I drew the devastating and complicated responses of Nazi POWs as they were forced to view how they had brutalized people during WWII.
Through it all, I painted.
In these galleries you will see the evidence of my search for strength and understanding, and my reaffirmation of love, life and the beauty all around us.
