you can still see Garbo on the postage stamp 

 

 

Notes of a Notebook

 

inset is my favorite Rossetti drawing, torn off a psychology book that wasn’t as good as its cover. This notebook was given to me by the office staff manager st “Pearle(Art Supplies” in East Meadow, NY), the Waterhouse to the left and my mangas have been stuck on there for years—since I took it home; and it has traveled everywhere with me, starting with NY, then MI, Oregon, MD and back to NY….and I just can’t stop staring at the stars 

*Another personal note on PRB

So upon considering why I had first been pulled under the poetry of the PreRaphaelites, the tragic loss I’d suffered, I could never fully embrace Dante Gabriel Rossetti —even as he was the driving force of the brotherhood I was disturbed by his sense of ethics. Especially as it felt to me hypocritical of what he claimed for their vision as artists, but deep down —a poet who digs up his wife’s grave to retrieve his poetry which he claimed he wrote for her….coupled with stealing William Morris’ wife around this time just is not garden variety immorality but something near a supreme sense of self importance and it comes across in his art 

while I love his use of red and his earliest drawings of Elizabeth Siddal, I find his inability to get his perspective right (Ecce Ancilla Domini to name one instance) gives me motion sickness —but his peer John Everett Millais was a most brilliant member; his work has always been among my favorites, especially ‘the Order of Release’ which I had framed and always hung everywhere I lived but got lost somewhere in the ruins I long left

Branded; howl at the moon

….and so, it is a long time that I stare at the wall. I sit down on the floor and look up 

 and I think about his words 

         how does he do this to me?

     just when I think ….no, I was just dreaming…. he proves himself ….and another one of his—some kind of mind blower moments

     like a moth to a flame …. that is the magnetic pull to him 

          his strange innate proclivities are at the exact polar place of all mine that in the middle it is like some exact balance 

I almost fall off the earth and it seems there is ….

      I stare at the wall and think 

        

             I think about all the paintings he has put there…. and his quiet …. silent …. way ….of reading me —memorizing my in between the lines that I only attest to as poetry but still my utmost ethically true ….but there he follows ….behind the doorways and I guess if it is worth the tedious but intended misdirections to him then I am more than glad to entertain whatever ideas he has in mind 

So I sit on the floor and consider his suggestion

        they are all elan …. the same story…. 

    

         I look at the celves and think about the fossil I found that day 

how it triggered weird new directions, as had the entire Elizabethan trip ….the trip in the wheat field(our school stayed at a youth hostel) that alerted my wheat allergy causing a serious infection, but seeing Shakespeare’s house after I’d already read and loved the Tempest then seeing it performed then the Taming of the Shrew at Stratford upon Avon 

there was something weird I felt being all around in these places, like previous times  

     After awhile I get up 

I go over to the work desk. He has a hand written note. In his odd but very neat and unique hand writing he has written: 

     

       ~The Time travel story— what if besides the visit to the Industrial Revolution and et Al there is the Vampire and the Dove story?

      What if they are all meant as one?~

There is a chair there by the desk. 

Convenient. I sit down.

Just when I think he doesn’t see me he ….

 He is such a wolf 

Branded or Beth

There is a sense, a fear, a moment when it seems as though I start to fear that maybe I was wrong to come here, and that maybe the feeling that he truly does see me was just wishful thinking— is it the reminder now of seeing the reality child he’d had with Clair during our relationship or the reality of the time we lost that has kept me so detached?

…. our intimacy —though intense…. it was like being caught up in a dream which ….

   in my pursuit of meaning, it feels bewildering 

Bran leaves early in the morning to take Ioan to his mother’s but he says I should get to work on the new ideas he has been working on with my images. 

He says,

“the password to the computer in the office is ‘ElectraComplexX2,” and hands me the key to the door. 

I don’t go to look right away. Instead I go to the garden to think.

By the time I decide to go to the office, my mind is in a state of deep thought that I hardly notice what I see.

In fact I am standing there awhile staring at a wall without comprehending for awhile what I am looking at. 

The office. I see it is arranged for two people. Two desks and a big work table with chairs. 

But it is what is pinned to the wall. The main wall. The one where you have to look first at. 

It is arranged like a crime detective. The way they put clippings, or photos, or documents or any bits of memorabilia associated with “the case” and as such, red pinned in neat chronological order as they emerged. 

There is an almost life sized reproduction of Wavegirl; of the reflection in the water horse painting; of the faery in chains; and finally of the Viking carrying off Elan painting/The Pirate and the Dove —prints of photo images of my paintings all laid across the long wall in the order I painted them….

I walk over slowly to the wall to read the sticky yellow note above the prints. It says: “What if all the paintings go together, as they all came from the subconscious mind or came about from dreams?”

And …. 

        realize …. 

 

with oils you are part chemist

 

You have to wait days till it dries to see how it sets. But do you see the gloss of the water? That is the difference of oil and acrylic and the scale of detail and how different oils will change this; but you have to be patient and wait and look at it

I had an art professor at school who forbid short handled paint brushes 

He made us stand several feet away from our work. And squint to obscure our eyes. 

But then, he only allowed primary color paint as we had to create every nuance of hue from this 

The point was, well, a painter is not an illustrator so the long handle is old school meant to not fall under the photographer syndrome of duplication