P280 Fossil Woman

P280 Fossil Woman
10x8" oil on canvas
Private collection

July 18, 2001: Another very warm day, the lake wrinkled by a breeze and the clouds stretched like gauze over a brilliant sky. A bird chirps. The wooden wind chimes clatter softly, musically. All other sounds are distant. An orange and black butterfly lands on a clump of red flowers in my garden, and the hummingbirds buzzes busily around the feeder and the flowers. A family of geese is idly paddling down the lake. The dog, panting, follows me, loyally lying down beside my chair.

I decided to bring some painting gear outside. It took me a while to set up my French easel on the deck. My arthritic fingers would not loosen the thumbscrews and wing nuts, so I had to run upstairs to the studio to find a pair of pliers, which I will keep in the easel box. Then I had to find tubes of colour and brushes and rags and thinner and pencils and art gum, and finally it is all set up before me, complete with a small panel. A very large dragonfly just landed beside the panel, as if to christen the set-up. I am having a wonderful time.

Since I brought French Ultramarine as my blue, I have the choice of any series subject. Among the limited colours, I chose Cadmium red, which I have not worked with since the Sanctuary Series, Cadmium yellow, Viridian, and my usual Paynes grey.

I drew a curled-up woman, all arms and knees with a particularly open and vulnerable armpit. The armpit makes me fall in love with the little picture. The other thing I love in this picture is the fall of hair, which looks like a rag or cloth in the left hand, curled over the head. Almost immediately I do the under-painting. A varying mixture of red and yellow for the body, pure Cadmium red for the hair, and ultramarine for the background.

The painting, which will have the catalogue number P280, has some interesting areas. What you at first take for the second knee is in fact a shoulder, and what you take for the other arm is a leg. The right arm is laced under and through the right leg. the red rag of hair looks like an organ, or blood. One can almost picture the figure as being hurt, crouched down and holding her head. I don't know what she is doing. She is supposed to be a fossil, so I suppose she is curled up, waiting to turn to stone. Or already turning, she cannot move. Her posture does resemble some of the body imprints found at Pompeii.

I like ambiguous figures like this. The interpretation is always up to the viewer, and differs with the viewer's frame of mind. The woman can appear peaceful, looking up at the sky or the sun, enjoying a relaxing moment, totally abandoned to sensation. Or she can be cowering, hiding from something, shielding herself with her arm. Is she opening up, or closing in? Is that really a red rag, waved in defiance? A red flag, warning. The woman is golden, glowing, a molten changeling. She refuses to be anything but what she is, this moment. She hold everything to her centre, and releases all, like birth, with a red flash. Even though she is facing upwards, her eyes are closed, concentrating inward. She already knows what is up there, out there. She closes her eye, feels it, and becomes it.

I love this painting because I genuinely didn't care what I painted, because I had no idea what I would do when I started, because I chose a different red this time, and because the drawing is primitive, a simple gesture, an iteration of a continuing idea.

It is getting dark, and I should put my painting away, even though it glows like a sunset. But I will have time to paint in the morning, especially if I get up early.

Paleozoic Series