R37 Ravens on the Brain
24 x 24" oil on panel
private collection
Return to Raven Series
04 November, 1987
03 November, 1987
30 October, 1987
10 September, 1987
05 September, 1987
23 August, 1987
22 August, 1987
21 August, 1987
R30 Meri's Idea
R30 Meri's Idea
10x14" designers opaque & watercolour
Return to Raven Series
08 August, 1987
08 July, 1987
07 July, 1987
07 June, 1987
R26 Raven Creature
R26 Raven Creature
10x14" designers opaque & watercolour
Corporate collection
It's a metaphoric creature, a human face, fishy parts, feathery parts, wing tips, and scaly clouds. There is no raven, as such, but the fishy part does have an odd thick-looking beak.
Return to Raven Series
02 June, 1987
R25 Rose Writing
R25 Rose Writing
10x14" designers opaque & watercolour
Corporate collection
May 27, 1987
I'm working on a small watercolour, R25, Rose writing/drawing with Raven. It is in the most muted pastels, grey, flesh and blue. It is lighter than air, made of airy spaces with only a darker underside, just showing. Raven, in this picture, is disappearing, making way for something else.
This picture has no meaning, really. It is just part of that blending-edge, brushed over and fanned outward to become other thoughts and concepts. The shapes will alter; the colours will change. But the artistic intent will always be the same. What a quest my brush is on. What a trail my pen makes. What an illusion my shaded colours give. What a story!
Return to Raven Series
01 June, 1987
R24 Nuclear Creature
R24 Nuclear Creature
36x24" oil on panel
Here the checkerboard becomes three-dimensional, heaving up in irregular thrust faults, the upheaval of a threatening world. The order and pattern of life is broken up, but out of the disorder and threats (missiles, darts, dark birds, like omens) there arises a new creature.
March 24, 1987
New panel on the easel. A new beginning. I have taken my time on the drawing, trying to interpret my mental state, give birth to a little being that is not man or woman, but an artistic spirit. Brave little artist, hissing up through the fissures and angles of a warped set of blocks, erupting in a flare of wings like black fire; sensing something out there, analyzing data. Defiant. This is the little spirit that I am painting.
22 June 1987
Completed the oil painting, R24 , after working on it all day and most of the evening. Most of my recent drawing s and watercolours have the same motif, an ambiguous creature rising up out of chaotic, fragmented surroundings. These are pictures that I may not like in the future, but they are essential products of my thought processes at the moment. It is as though my purpose were to take apart what I have been doing (origin) and examine every piece (fragmentation) and come up out of it with a new vision (eruption). All my creatures are pushing, reaching, climbing, striving. Out of confusion, one vision.
Eve was bent over her new picture, etching lines into the wet oil of the under-painting with a stylus.
“What is that?” Allan asked.
“I am trying to interpret my mental state,” she said without looking up. “I’m making a little being that is not a man or a woman, but an artistic spirit. A brave little artist,” she indicated a creature with the point of her stylus, “hissing up through the fissures and angles of a warped set of blocks, erupting in a mass of wings…they look like black fire, don’t you think?...sensing something out there, out beyond the painting. Defiant.”
I had to ask, Allan thought. Did she rehearse speeches like that?
Mary Weymark Goss (from the novel ‘Raven’)
Return to Raven Series
28 May, 1987
27 May, 1987
24 April, 1987
R21 Rose and Tapestry
R21 Rose and Tapestry
24x36" oil on panel
Private collection
How did I come about making this image? I was working on the Raven tapestry at the time, and had Rose pose with it. Rose had been ill, and had a fragile look. Her slumped pose is the natural posture she took when she sat down in the rocker.
Rose was curled in a chair on the other side of the room, stitching at a tapestry, a picture of a blue-black raven rising up out of a gold and green foreground of ferns and fireweed. There was no design on the fabric…she wasn’t following a pattern. She just built up her picture, stitch by stitch like a mosaic.
She looked up at Allan. Her smile spread so slowly that Allan found himself almost fully caught up in those lips, peripherally aware of her staring eyes and the pecking movement of the needle in the canvas.
-Mary Weymark Goss (from the novel Raven)
Return to Raven Series
23 April, 1987
22 April, 1987
18 January, 1987
R18 Nuclear Kitchen
R18 Nuclear Kitchen
10x14" designers opaque and watercolour
Personal collection
I worked on this on my lap in the living room, and kept adding things that I saw around the house. There is a mixer with a raven claw for a blade, a stove knob that looks like a raven’s eye, and a cigarette lighter with a beak and an eye.
Return to Raven Series
05 January, 1987
04 January, 1987
03 January, 1987
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