This face is on fire

"To cause the face to appear in a mass of flame make use of the following:

mix together thoroughly petroleum, lard, mutton tallow and quick lime.

Distill this over a charcoal fire and the liquid which results 

can be burned on the face without harm."

-- Harry Houdini

Face in the fire 7-13-13

 

"Fire has a mind and a determination. 

You don’t see it as a blind raging thing, which I suppose it is, 

but something that attacks and thinks and changes tactics. 

It has a malevolence that uses surprise, dirty tricks, cunning. 

You get to think of it as someone, not something, and it’s someone you have to beat, 

but right from the start you don’t like your chances 

because it’s so big and unpredictable and can do so much harm.”

-- Bryce Courtenay, Four Fires

Face in the fire (2) 7-13-13

“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.” 

-- William Butler Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire

Jill, my super-awesome friend extraordinaire, came to visit yesterday.
We went for a motorcycle ride, had Tacos for supper, and then my son Leo built us a campfire on the back patio and shot off some fireworks.

I didn't have a face for the day yet, and it was getting late. I seriously did not know what I was going to post today. The cupboard was looking pretty bare.

Face in the fire (3) 7-13-13

Then Leo put some kind of color-changing glow-stick into the fire, and the flames started burning blue, green, red, fuchsia. I grabbed my camera and took a few pictures. When I started looking through the photos I'd shot, my imagination conjured faces in the flames. It was kind of like seeing pictures in the clouds. Some of the faces took a moment to see, but once I saw them, they were obvious and extraordinary and magical.

The face at the top of the page reminds me of the Hindu fire god -- Agni.

The second one looks like a flaming warrior -- some kind of Spartan or something -- turned in profile, wearing full regalia, face upturned with a plume of fire on his helmet.

The one to the right is a little trickier to see. Take a second and look for it. The face is a sad one with little eyes and a frowning mouth.There is a large, gaping black space spreading across the middle of the face, just below the eyes.

The one below reminds me of a flame-engulfed comedy/tragedy theater mask.

Face in the fire (4) 7-13-13

If Jill hadn't come to visit, these faces never would have happened.
We probably wouldn't have lit the fireworks or built the fire.
But Jill did come to visit.
And these faces did happen.
Like Jill, they only stayed for a little while.
Like Jill, they burned and flickered bright and beautiful, and then they were gone.

Runaway

“Will you teach me how to paint?”
“Just paint.”
“I’m not any good.”
“Do it for therapy. You can go to art school later.” 

--Benjamin Alire Saenz,  
Last Night I Sang to the Monster

 

Hypnos (or Sleep) 6-2-13

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling
is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

-- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.”

-- Albert Camus

When I was a kid and I was having a difficult day, I'd put Neil Diamond's "12 Greatest Hits" album on my sky-blue flip-top portable record player, sit on the floor in my bedroom and draw.

Mostly I drew faces. I copied the album cover portrait of Neil Diamond -- the fluffy long hair one of him in the suede jacket and the chest hair-revealing unbuttoned white shirt with the gi-normous lapels.

This one.

I knew all of the words to all 12 of the songs: Sweet Caroline, Brother Loves Traveling Salvation Show, Shiloh, Holly Holy, Brooklyn Roads, Cracklin' Rosie, Play Me, Done Too Soon, Stones, Song Sung Blue, Soolaimon, I Am ... I Said.

Aw geez.

I forgot all about "I Am ... I Said."

I am, I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
I am, I cried
I am, said I
And I am lost, and I can't even say why
Leavin' me lonely still

It was a kind of sacred space there on the floor of my room with my back against my bed and my feet against the wall, drawing pad balanced across my knees, door closed, music on ... I could just check out for a while until I felt better.

Making art still serves that function for me. Although my current musical obsession is the movie soundtrack from The Great Gatsby, I still have a sacred space I can escape to, a room that is filled with materials and media to busy my hands and my heart while diverting my mind. It's like escaping without having to go anywhere.

Like Twyla Tharp famously said, "Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."   

So, today's face.

With sincerest apologies and respect to all of the real painters out there ...
Please  pardon me for trespassing and leaving my sloppy fingerprints all over your territory.

True confession: I am not a painter. I am a hack and I know it.
Even though I have painted pictures my whole life long, I never learned to paint. 

Never learned how to do it right, anyway.
Nevertheless, I do like to play with the medium sometimes.

I do it in secret and don't show my paintings to anybody. 

Drawings? Sometimes.
Paintings? Never.

Usually everything I paint ends up in the trash can rather than on the wall. 

But since this is the only face I made today -- and since this project is about the process and not the final product -- I am putting on my big-girl panties and sharing it.

And in the spirit of full disclosure and true confessions ... I finger-painted it.
No actual paintbrushes were harmed in the rendering of this portrait. Just a couple of pencils, my bare hands and a few squirts of acrylic paint.

I don't really consider this portrait of Hypnos/Somnus (the Greek/Roman god of sleep) a painting ... it is more of a sketch, really. A sketch rendered in paint. Can that be a thing? It began as a frustrated pencil drawing, and just as I was about to crumple it up I decided to paint over it instead and this is what I got.

I can't say I love this piece, but I made it, and making it helped me to make it through a difficult day.

I have to admit, it was pretty darned therapeutic.
Messy, but therapeutic.

But then again, the best therapy usually is the messiest therapy, isn't it?