A Keyhole Life Drawing Session last night. The Keyhole is still working through the Seven Deadly Sins, and last night was Envy. These are all charcoal on 18" x 24" sheets of 90lb archival paper, or, in the last of the one of three models, pencil on primed canvas.

I put a post up of the ones with a Photoshop filter added to G+ and Facebook (see the end of this post), and the dearth, the silence, it was resounding. So I removed the 'offensive' drawings from both sites, and put this note up instead:

I deleted the Keyhole Session post I put up earlier. I keep forgetting that I shouldn't. Because it's staged performance, and while not my sexuality, I do support the freedom of others to practice 'alternative sexualities' if it's between consenting adults and no-one gets hurt. There is mojo in these life drawing sessions; the poses are great. Everyone at The Keyhole is an artist, all the models, the lady who runs it, those who come to draw. Everyone I've met is sweet in way young people are, and the atmosphere is happy, and everyone, artists and models, work very, very hard. It takes place in a bar. The models are on the stage, lit by stage lights, and we draw in a darkened room with drinks if we wish.

But posting the results of these few hours of drawing isn't fine in a public forum, or even an artist's forum, as those I belong to at G+ and on Facebook. I should know this from the past two times I attended one of these sessions. I even sat next to the art teacher who goes every month and does great drawings but who never posts them on-line. When asked, because he posts lots of other life drawing he does around the city, he says, "No, I never post these." He shrugs. It's not his 'thing,' and yet who would understand? Not posting makes sense. There's nothing inherently wrong with this life-drawing venue, but people make assumptions, and judgements. An embarrassing moment that I witnessed was afterwards, when one of the models came over and asked if he was "-"; he said yes. And she bubbled, "You taught me art in high school." He didn't know what to say; clearly he was trying to place her, this beautiful plump woman with purple hair. He found the drawings he'd done of her - all magnificently beautiful - and she oooh-ed one of them, but was talking to others and didn't pay much attention. I think he was trying to give them to her as a gift. He pulled them back and stuffed them into his portfolio and left. 

That said, below are the drawings I did last night, untouched. My mother is fast fading, and the family is spinning into a vortex. I don't when, or if I'll ever get back to 'finish' these, even to clean up their clumsiest spots.









And here's a slideshow of the drawings with the Photoshop filter I added (that I posted on-line, and also sent to The Keyhole Sessions for their the-morning-after-the-night-before-roundup/drawings):

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I have no idea how this is going to work. Still have to put some daylight bulbs in. The carpet is covered in thick plastic mats, taped down. Will my kitten climb that 5' x 5' canvas? - she scampered up and down the panel when it was a room divider. I had set up a portable studio in my daughter's room, but need something more permanent. This corner of the living room is only what we walked through. It wasn't used space. Stuff got stacked there, canvases (now stored behind the large one), dog kennel, etc. It makes my living room look quite junky, but then, I am mostly a recluse, and hardly have visitors, so what am I worrying about? A bit far from the windows, but the late afternoon sun certainly sweeps into those corners.

It was hard work with the bung wrist 'n all dragging this office divider around (it formerly hid a corner of junk, like bundle buggies), and who-knows-how clipping the canvas onto it. It's approximately 5' x 5', and will have to do. I still have to clear that corner of the living room out, cover the floor in layers of thick plastic runners, get a kind person to take a lot of stuff downstairs for me, but, it is do-able. I wasn't strong enough to staple the canvas around the back, those clips were hard enough. I am so independent I don't like to ask for help from anyone, but I did call my son, and he wasn't home. The MUSE is a slave driver, honestly.

It is a bit bizarre, but indulge me. Painted hand, actual hand, x-ray of the bones of that hand. Digitally created image of, uh, real stuff.
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Sunday, 01 August 2004

This is a large painting, 4ft by 5ft, and it was many years in the making.

What I went through over it, I can barely look at it. It was my post polar bear painting. Pure soul retrieval. It consists of three actual self portraits, and one psychic self-portrait. It was about finding myself again after my marriage collapsed.

This painting had something to do with that collapse. A bit of paint on canvas, but not as innocent as it looks. After we bought our cottage, I stopped painting. The cottage was really one large room, and my children were small. After almost 7 years, I began to miss painting, which is like a need in me, and which I don't understand because nothing throws me into as much despair as painting, to paint is pure torment, it is where I throw my life on the line, risk everything, and is anything but an enjoyable activity, sort of like giving birth, it's best when it's done.

Anyway, we were having financial difficulties, but I asked my husband if I might have a large canvas for my birthday. He said no. That there was not enough money--he was still going through a case of beer a week and a bottle of wine every other night, but, for me, no.

The next year again I asked him for the same present. Can I have a big canvas for my birthday? Still the same answer. No. No money. He must have felt some remorse though, because maybe a month later he said I could go get a canvas if I wanted, but I didn't because I wanted him to give it to me as a gift, meaning for him to recognize my need to paint, and to support my talent too. He is a poet himself, having published 6 books or so, and always received emotional support from me, as well as time away from the kids to write, not to mention a typist in pre-computer days for his manuscripts.

Shortly after this we separated. It was amicable, we had a Separation Ritual, inviting the same people who had witnessed our wedding at City Hall 15 years earlier, and a party afterwards.

I told a friend at the Waldorf school that my children attended at the time about the canvas. She looked at me incredulously. I'll never forget the look in her eyes, ever. And said, "But why didn't you buy the canvas yourself?"

So I did. I was working, editing, and did have money. It cost around $100. My ex picked it up for me from the discount art store where I ordered it and brought it home on the roof rack. That was supportive, no? Or perhaps it was because I had broken the code of silence between us and told someone else and he was a little embarrassed.

It could have been the relationship, the long hard years of being secondary to my husband, of having my writing, painting, degrees considered not just unimportant but a waste of time, of my ideas, perceptions, learning existing only to catapult him to poetic stardom, and so on. But by the time 1997 rolled around I realized I had developed major creative blocks.

With much will power, I began the painting. It was like learning to walk all over again. Slow, hesitant, painful. The first image in the middle is from a photograph taken when I was 32, in the a few months after my father died. His death signified the loss of many things in my life, and my probable career in academia. She's standing in a yellow rain slicker in the mountains, mountains which I painted in and then painted out. When my father died, something died in me also, and so I painted my younger self as a way to go back and retrieve her drive and enthusiasm for learning, for life, for reaching out. Above her is another me, with antlers growing out of her head, a little older, from a photo taken at the cottage. The angel is from a photo at my daughter's second birthday party. The old woman on the right is an image after one in "Soul Cards," by Deborah Koff-Chapin (Center for Touch Drawing, 1995), and was a card I pulled almost weekly at the small yoga class I taught.

The painting’s a triptych. It's the old Christian tri-level world, hell, earth, heaven, only in New Age spirituality, it's grounding yourself in the earth for renewal, through your Winter, ordinary life in a yellow rain slicker, looking upwards, moments of revelation, nature, with echoes of shamanic spirituality, and the angel is one's higher self, a more wise version of oneself who can guide one through.

All in all, I worked on it from 1997-2002. It's called, "Self Portraits." After I finished it, I realized that I never wanted to paint at an easel with a brush again and began throwing my canvas’ on the floor and finger painting right out of the tube; whenever, that is, that I can work through the creative blocks that I am still struggling with.

That’s the story of the painting that I posted today.

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My muse, oh, Muse! For about a month, when I think of painting, it is always life-sized figures on a large canvas sheet. 'But, Muse, I can't afford that, and have nowhere to staple such canvas, no walls free at all!' Does The Muse care? Not a whit. Never does. Then this and that happened, and today I bought some double-primed canvas, 60" wide and 2 yards long, or 6'. I carried it home in a roll the actor who works part-time at the art store kindly insisted on rolling it in for me ('primed canvas is fragile, it remembers crinkles,' he said). Where I will hang it while the muse has her way with painting, I don't know. I suppose call the lumber yard tomorrow and see how much 5' x 6' thin plywood boards are, and if affordable, see if the truck might happen to be in my area and can drop it off.

I would have bought more - 12' long, enough for two paintings - but had to discipline my muse. 'Enough! I need to eat, too.' And placate. 'We'll get more canvas if this one works out, ok?'

The last thing I need is more canvas piling up in the bottom of the closet. Last year I actually sewed all the strips of unprimed canvas I had lying around and made what is essentially a stage set with it (as you can see in the image I posted).



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clew 1  (kl) n. 1. A ball of yarn or thread. 2. Greek Mythology The ball of thread used by Theseus to find his way out of the labyrinth. 3. clews The cords by which a hammock is suspended. 4. also clue Nautical a. One of the two lower corners of a square sail. b. The lower aft corner of a fore-and-aft sail. c. A metal loop attached to the lower corner of a sail. tr.v. clewed, clew·ing, clews 1. To roll or coil into a ball. 2. also clue Nautical To raise the lower corners of (a square sail) by means of clew lines. Used withup. [Middle English clewe, from Old English cliwen.]

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clew 2  (kl) n. & v. Chiefly British Variant ofclue1.

Definition found at The Free Dictionary.
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My latest paintings. Mandate: sit, paint. Without preconception, or any idea of what I will paint. It has to be fast, because that is how these paintings are. Not overworked, this so very important. Fresh, the brush of inspiration.



"Untitled", 2012, Brenda Clews, 18" x 24", oils, India and acrylic inks on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet.



"A Palmistry, a Psalm", 2012, Brenda Clews, 18" x 24", charcoal, oils, oil pastels, oil sticks on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet. I am working on a videopoem of this poem and painting.



She Rests on Pillows in the Grass, 2012, Brenda Clews, 24" x 18", 60cm x 45cm, oil paint on 90lb archival paper.

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Untitled, as of yet. I just painted this. An iPhone photo taken with a daylight bulb. 18" x 24", oil on canvas sheet.

I have been deeply troubled, as ever, by Syria, the refugee camps, the deaths, the conflagrations. And the miners in South Africa, their horrendous treatment, not just the shooting deaths, but the survivors being charged with murder (withdrawn as of today, but it influences). This is a -just-sit-down-and-paint-woman-whatever-fucking-emerges-let-it-be- painting. From the inner self, where the cauldron burns.




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direct link: Test clip for 'Palmistry, a Psalm'- an underlayer (another unlisted videopoem of 46sec)

This is a 46 second snippet of 5 minute clip of the writing of the whole prose/poem on parchment paper to see if it would fit on the final painting, and I think I will make the clip the underlayer of the video, what is returned to again and again as an underlying metaphor amidst many more layers, a greater visual complexity. My intention is to include images of the hand: an x-ray, a painted hand, a real hand, a hand wrapped in a black brace. And the painting in its stages and the final with the writing. Also, some other public domain footage. The final 'video painting poem' could take a few months to finish.

Here's a blog post with the prose/poem, a recording, and images.

The sounds of the pen? Moi. The beautiful bird song, however, is from Alban Lepsy's album, Relaxation Nature vol.1.

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