I’m sitting in a black and white skull dress in front of a grouping of black and white drawings; A powerful portrait in charcoal by William Kentridge hangs on the wall in front of me. I think to myself, don’t need to rush, I can spend as much time as I need to. I stand in front of white canvases listening to the collage of footsteps, how they echo from the other side of the wall, no faces, only sound. Jasper Johns paintings, every time I see them I look at them in a new light. I recognize a piece of myself, understanding things in these paintings I hadn’t understood before. I have moments of memory flash through my being, remembering sitting in front of these giant Clifford Stills, on my lunch break, or after work on my way to Bart. I spent so much time at MOMA I wonder how much influence these Abstract Expressionistic paintings had on my practice. The Rothko, Joan Mitchell, Jay Defeo, Guston, Lobell paintings I know. I feel like I’m with good old friends. I haven’t seen them in so long; I’ve only been once since they remodeled and that time was with kids. I miss my days in the MOMA, alone. Visiting galleries. I feel like I climbed back over a bridge to a part of myself deep down inside. Today I needed a break, a bath, studio time, writing time. So, Right when we got home today from preschool, I put the babies down for a nap. They fell asleep around 1:30PM. (An hour earlier than usual.) It was so hot and they were so tired and I needed what I needed. It worked out perfectly. Today in my studio I paint in shades of blues, inspired by our meditation on water this morning. I feel like hanging them up in my house to cool things off. My note book entries are beauties too, and I closed the cover of one more note book for my show. I love the quiet right now. I only hear the fridge, the air conditioner and fan. It’s dead hot and quiet outside. Jack and Fiona will be waking from their nap soon. Time to go and make snack!
Category: growing older
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I notice the sound of my hands on the paper as I smooth down a piece of collage. So quiet and peaceful. After days of no break, no studio, no writing, no quiet time, this feels right. It’s been a stressful week, politically it’s been just like FUCK!! Keeping up with the news is a fulltime affair, what kind of crazy shit is Trump going to do today I think as I get out of bed. Please don’t let us be entering another war or starting a new war. I obsess about what countries could hit us with a bomb, could we be invaded and taken over or is America going to just obliterate every population of people that disagrees or get in the way of “American Interests”? It’s frightening, so when I get my break, babies asleep, I NEED to write and paint, even if it’s just for an hour. So many things have happened lately I’ve wanted to write about. Sweet things being mom. The other day when I was packing our picnic for the beach I wrote everyone’s name on our sandwiches with a sharpie. When I got to mine, I wrote “MOM”, her name came into my mind at the exact moment. “Mines the one with Mom written on it” I say to Danny as he’s handing out the sandwiches from the cooler, on a sunny shore, Point Reyes in February, we celebrate our freedom. Alan is upset because I don’t have Dad written on his. “It was personal” I say. I can’t think of the right words to describe the emotions I’m feeling. But it was because I was thinking about my mom, how we were a family, Danny, me and Mom. For the first time, I realized I’m the mom in our group now, in our family. I have entered mom’s role, taking some of that space, breathing some of that air she used to. I call myself mom for the first time and own it. I just now notice the fan blowing. My hands are cold and I realize I am running out of time in my studio. I have several paintings started, I want to get more painting time. Yellows and blacks and whites, collage, notebooks, need to add some marks. Need to get back to painting before I’m back in the house, in my life of wonderment and surprise.
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I see the shadow of a crow out of the corner of my eye and hear a Blue Jay squawk. It’s still quiet in my house, I’m glad it’s Saturday morning. A moth crawls up and down the window, should I take him outside, or let him reach the same fate as the moth I found on the kitchen window sill? The beautiful iridescent, brown, velvety, creature. “Look Jack and Fiona, what I found!” I say. I show them the delicate specimen, pull open his wing to reveal a beautiful orange and yellow surprise. The following day when we go to examine the moth again deterioration had already begun. His whiskers have fallen off and I can no longer pull open his wing. Back to the earth the moth will go.
My quiet morning has just concluded. “Mama” Jack calls. I yell back, “Yeah, do you want pumpkin pancakes?” He says “Yes”. I thought I would have more time to write. They didn’t go to bed until 10:30 last night. I lay in their room too tired to do anything else while they play and laugh and jump on top of me. I think it was those chocolate candies we ate, it wound them up. I was tired though. I’ve been working hard on my canvas paintings. My “Notebook project” is there too, which I work on every time I am in my studio. I am grappling with the difference between working in my notebooks and on the canvas. I had a thought this morning, the notebooks are informal, the large canvas feels formal. It also feels plastic, the gessoed canvas compared to paper. There’s also a huge size difference. But I’m making headway. My books feel more sculptural, more immediate, I am trying to think of the canvas in that way. Not just a 2d image, surface orientated, but the whole thing. Also the notebooks are a series, many pages of experiments and images that relate to each other, I am trying to work on my canvases as more of a group. Although this is quite challenging due to space issues, but if I could just lay out several like I do my notebooks I think I’d have better luck. Right now I am forced to be very close at all times to the canvas.
Time to go now and make Pumpkin pancakes!
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 