"Thinking Itself Is Love - Self Portrait with Brain Tumor"

"Thinking Itself Is Love (Self Portrait with Brain Tumor)"
16 x 8" mixed media

After thinking about this project for over a year, I finally made this self portrait. I used references from my MRI scans that were taken before neurosurgery to remove a benign Meningioma brain tumor. I am doing very well, nearly two years post-op. Thank you to everyone who supported me during this most trying time of my life. I really don't know where I would be without all of you.

I have spent a great deal of time thinking about how a broken heart might effect the mind and physical and mental health. Forgiveness and Love are always the answer. 

"…the heart is not broken, in the sense that it does not exist before the break. But it is the break itself that makes the heart. The heart is not an organ, and neither it is a faculty. It is: that I is broken and traversed by the other where its presence is most intimate and its life is most open. The beating of the heart - rhythm of the partition of being, syncope of the sharing of singularity - cuts across presence, life, consciousness. That is why thinking - which is nothing other than the weighing or testing of the limits, the ends, of presence, of life, of consciousness - thinking itself is love."

 ~ Jean Luc Nancy, Shattered Love

"Dove and Peonies" Commission

"Dove and Peonies"

 

 

 

Commissioned charcoal drawing on beige paper with white pastel pencil. 10 x 8"

Magnolia and Dove

"Magnolia and Dove"

 8 x 8" charcoal and white pastel pencil on beige paper. A gift for a friend.

"3 Graces" triptych

Charcoal on Mylar film, side pieces, 20 x 16" center piece, 30×20." From the "Black Butterfly: The Muse" series.

The 3 Graces: Aglaia (radiance) Euphrosyne (joy) Thalia (flowering) It was the poet Hesiod who named the Graces in his Theogony: "Then Eurynome, Ocean's fair daughter, bore to Zeus the three Graces, all fair-cheeked, Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and shapely Thalia; their alluring eyes glance from under their brows, and from their eyelids drips desire that unstrings the limbs."

From reference photos of San Francisco groupies, 1968 - 69, by Rolling Stone magazine photographer Baron Wolman.



3 Graces ~ section 1 ~ Aglaia (radiance): groupie Karen Seltenrich, San Francisco, Nov. 1968. Image was used in a New York Times article “When we tell you what a Groupie is, will you really understand?”



3 Graces ~ section 2 ~ Thalia (flowering): groupie Sally Mann, San Francisco, Nov. 1968. (No relation to the photographer of the same name) Sally married Jefferson Airplane's Spencer Dryden in 1970.



3 Graces ~ section 3 ~ Euphrosyne (joy): groupie “HARLOW”, San Francisco, Nov. 1969.

Here is a quote from Baron about the groupies:

"As concert promoter Bill Graham has given me all access to any of the concerts he produced, I spent quite a bit of time backstage with the bands, their roadies and their women. What fascinated me were the lengths to which the women, the groupies, went to prepare themselves for their backstage appearances. Because I also wanted an excuse to photograph them, I suggested to Jann they might make an interesting story. He agreed and Rolling Stone Magazine No. 27 became known as "the groupie issue." It was widely promoted, read and commented upon, even turned into a book." - Baron Wolman

I saw these photos in an old book picked up at a resale shop. I fell in love with the groupies, and Baron was so gracious to allow me to use them for the drawings. The feminine effect of the references are enhanced with the flowers and butterflies. I decided to draw Sally Mann, the subject of the centerpiece, holding the lilies, as she married soon after the photo was taken. The center piece is considerably larger than the side pieces, on these the flowers and butterflies are from a pattern I saw on scented drawer liner paper. It's all about peace & love & hippie-ness, baby. :)

While the rest of the models I've used in the series are in the arts themselves, I was intrigued with the idea of groupies - and their intrigue with rock & roll artists of the late 1960's. It seems to me they were using their own bodies and persona as an art form to attract their artistic "muses."

I guess you could consider some of the works in my Black Butterfly series "Cover Tunes." I believe the borrowed references are vital to the series to relate the idea of inspiration, and its relation to talent and celebrity. These "tunes" well deserve a stylish, honorable replay. Many thanks to the talented people who have loaned their vision of the muse to aid me in illustrating my ideas.