Living life through visual art - when it's not created by the self.

If Bev titled this piece, I don’t know what she called it.

I love it for a variety of reasons, but one of the primary reasons can’t be seen when looking at this work.  Strange, but true.

Bev did not make her living painting, but it was evident in her work, because it was an important hobby to her.  She brought in her paintings regularly, and hung them up in her office and around the lobby of the building.  Eventually she had to remove the ones from the lobby, because they would be stolen.  It was everyone’s loss, overall, but I think it’s a testament to how wonderful her work is.

Nonetheless, most of her work was people, animals or landscapes.  None of it dull, by any stretch of the imagination, but all of it firmly rooted in reality.  Some of her pieces were huge, nearly the size of the wall they hung on and some were tiny, barely a foot by a foot.  In taking them all in, a person was enveloped in a kaleidoscope of colour and imagery, and it made doing business in her office much more pleasant.

So when I saw this piece hanging on her office wall, I was astounded.  It was completely unlike anything I had seen her bring in before, and I never saw anything similar again.  However, it also hung on her office wall for well over a year, despite others changing with time.

I had wanted this painting without realizing I wanted it since the first moment I saw it.  I tried to buy it for my ex-husband when we were first dating, and then decided that buying art for someone is like getting them a puppy.  Not a good idea and best left to them 99 times out of 100.  But I kept coming back to it, and eventually my ex purchased it for me as his wedding gift to me.  I have rarely had such a perfect gift, and so unexpected, despite the fact that probably half my friends and family knew of my desire for this piece.

I love this piece because it’s an old adobe home, but it makes me think of a castle.  I love it for it’s mystical qualities – is the adobe fading into the cosmos, or being formed from them?  The work is somehow uncontrolled and moody.  It’s not a work that inspires serenity in me.  It’s dynamic and almost creepy.  And yet – and yet it’s lovely and I always want to climb those steps into that home.  Nevermind that the home might swirl away in a blink, and suck me into some unknown vortex.

The creepy factor of this painting ratcheted up by a factor of a thousand in the second year of my marriage.  One of the most wonderful things about art is the fact that, when done correctly, someone can notice something new and intriguing about a work after years of seeing it.  Unfortunately, when a work already trends toward surreal, that new thing that is noticed is not always a pleasant discovery.

For me, that moment came when I was having an extremely rough semester in graduate school, and suddenly found myself flipping out over something.  I don’t recall anymore what set me off, but I was nearly in a panic.

To try to calm down, I went to my bedroom and sat on the bed.  Looking across the room, I saw this painting, and my eyes were drawn to the bruja in the upper left corner.  I had never seen her before, and in my screwed-up moment, she was truly evil.  My panic progressed into hysteria.  This didn’t help my poor friend who was the only other person in the house, at the time.

I ended up making him move the painting, and trade it with the other oil we had hanging in the room.  This was a simple picture of concentric circles starting in dark blue and progressing down the shades until it was suddenly a bright yellow circle.  Very pretty and very soothing – it lives with my ex-husband now.  My friend was extra confused by this move, though, because it put the painting that was so frightening to me closer to me, and moved the soothing one farther away.  Perhaps so, but I knew the painting wasn’t going to actually hurt me, I just didn’t want to see it as regularly.  By switching the two, I could see the soothing one ten times more often than the frightening one.  I don’t believe he ever understood, and as we are no longer friends, there’s no chance he ever will.  It wasn’t a lack of empathy on his part, simply that his brain didn’t follow the logic trails my brain laid down.  If we all had a nickel for every time that happened, eh?

Unfortunately, this mental trauma resulted in about two years of being unable to completely deal with the painting.  There was a time when I felt we might have to get rid of it, simply because I would start to feel similar freak-outs every time I looked at it too long.  But I hadn’t stopped loving the painting, so I was utterly torn.  And I insisted we keep it, but that it not be hung in our bedroom.

Eventually, my life fell apart, but not because of the painting.  My marriage was shown to be built on false pretenses – unintentional, but with their genesis in that lack of intent.  The communication we thought we had never existed, and when we finally started communicating, nothing was as the other thought it should be.  Once we started getting it all out in the open, our marriage suffered a meteoric fall.  With that, it felt that my whole life was built on confusion and anarchy.  Where were the rules by which I had lived my life, and why were they not working?  Where was my foundation?

I eventually discovered that foundation in my family and friends.  The same place it had always been.  I also spent a great deal of time looking at one other picture, Hour of Silver, by Betsy Greenlee.  I found a great deal of serenity in being on that river in my mind.  Growing up in a desert, I have always been both fascinated and terrified by water.  This picture captured the essence of the beauty, with none of the fear.

With that, I realized that foundation was also in me, and it took awhile to lose the feeling that I was an idiot for ever having doubted myself.  No, I’m not a perfect person for myself (I still eat ice cream for breakfast and then for dinner on occasion), but the basis of who I am and what I want and need has always been solid.  The wants and needs themselves may seem to change, but they are still there.

Occasionally, I need some chaos, some anarchy.  Other times, I need some realism and serenity.  I’d love to claim that as deep insight, but I suspect it just makes me like roughly six billion other people on this planet.  I just happen to be lucky enough to live in a place on this globe where my chaos and anarchy are mostly internal and I have the power to eventually deal with them.  However, it doesn’t change the need to create my own serenity.

I’m getting into the rhythm of my new life now. And, it’s not bad.  This brand new life is something I’ve been struggling to attain for longer than I’d realized.

The bruja still looks down at me, this time from within my bedroom and again over my bed.  I realize now that she’s not at all evil.  She just is.  It’s not a bad way to be.

Betsy Greenlee - Hour of Silver