Anatomy of a Painting
I’m not even really sure when I started this painting. I wasn’t documenting art at the time. Perhaps the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009. The only real memories I have attached to this include: painting in my sister’s old bedroom, surrounded by piles of mismatched teacups, bowels, and plates (relics of an unrealized psychedelic Alice in Wonderland-themed photo shoot) and nursing an obsession with David Lynch, namely Inland Empire, namely the closing credits that introduced me to Nina Simone via Sinnerman. I was thrilled by her version and its frenetic guitar, hi-hat, and handclaps that speed into the piano solo; the song functions as a release after a 3-hour, non-linear movie-within-a-movie, a film whose only description was “a woman in trouble”, a sentiment certainly relatable for any young female artist. The song plays and the credits build into a strange, semi-ecstatic dance release. It’s the best scene of the movie. I haven’t watched Inland Empire since then, and eventually this painting got shoved underneath plastic and sat in that bedroom for a decade and then eventually, unfortunately, in a garage, where it sat until I shipped it East and started working on it in April of 2023.
The first thing I did after choosing to start work on it was to chip away at some of the paint texture. I don’t remember why it was there, but it had to go. Using a palette knife, I tried to smooth it out, though I couldn’t get it all, so some of that texture still lives. It doesn’t quite make sense with the painting anymore because the shapes have changed on top. But the main forms still stay the same: two different versions of an abstracted female body. One of those including a disembodied hand holding up the sheet of reality. I’ll confess, I fell in love with this idea in ART102, winter of 2007–swiped from Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time. It just seemed so… ahead of its time. Optical illusion and fantasy. An awareness of a matrix centuries before the movie pushed into the lexicon.
Painting is an exercise in trust. Will this turn out? Will the form start to emerge from one random brush stroke made on a whim? Or will I need to wait days for it to dry, cover it up with white and start over (and over)? It’s always some of both. Learning how to better replica liquid drops (hint: there’s a bulge at the end), learning how to round out a human calf. Learning what happens when you paint layer upon layer of French Ultramarine Blue, Dioxazine Purple, Manganese Blue, Mars Black. Mixing with the brush slightly on the palette and then directly on canvas. Phthalo Turquoise is thin, you must build it up. Cadmium Green is all-consuming; one drop and it takes over. Understanding the theory, the feminist critique-it can’t go away, and if I’m going to paint a female nude, well, it will never be just about beauty and form. And she certainly isn’t sitting with a completely waxed pubic area and a perfectly symmetrical bosom. This isn’t about that. No, give her a bowl of green liquid as a head, a covering of neon drips, arms missing. (I feel mildly certain this bowel-as-head is from the dishes surrounding me in that bedroom.)
I wanted some part of this to stay the same. I didn’t want to completely cover the original, which had much less contrast, much less technical command, much less an idea where the swirls and squiggles were going. And as much as I wanted to keep the vertical wallpaper-striped background in its original acrylic form, it needed touching up. The hair needed more paint straight from the tube. So the sole arm, holding up the world—that’s it. That’s the only piece untouched prior to hibernation.
…
The start of July was strange. I found myself stuck in my apartment with a freshly baked cherry pie and no one to share it with. The world felt alarmingly lonesome in that moment. In fact, it felt dire. And as I was listening to Gabi Abrao’s voice via Patreon, she doled out the best advice I’d heard in ages. When you find yourself thinking of someone, taking up time in your brain— the second they pop in, visualize something completely different. Something you want. So I’d just think of this painting. Varnished, framed, hanging on my wall. Finished. Closure. I lived through the existential pie-crisis. I found a reason to keep reaching back out to humanity.
And suddenly, near the end of July, I dove headfirst into the Caroline Calloway-lore, deep down in there (The Cut piece, the Vice documentary, the Reddit, screenshots of old Cambridge captions, every single podcast on her press tour, Adult Drama, etc. etc.) All of it, her interviews in my head while I focused on retouching edges, adding the last little bits of composition (the lightning cracks). Her frantic, excitable energy splat all over those interviews, inside my ears, helping me finish this damn thing. Her life, rife with tragedy and spotlit for the entire world to see, part performance art, part hedonism, part self-indulgence (as all good art ultimately is), explaining schemes around PR, around book structure, around bisexuality. Is this for real? Is she mad? (Once my copy of Scammer comes, perhaps I’ll know.) Much like The Wolf of Wall Street, listening to Caroline tickles the part of me that wants to just fall apart, indulge every sense, no matter who it affects. And she also kicks me into high gear, keeping me on the rollercoaster with her. Is this whole thing ethical to watch? At this point, timed with her book release, her story feels triumphant. I hope she keeps writing books. I hope Scammer is great.
I think about the young woman I was when I started this. Excited by weird art that made me feel alive, same as today, though sometimes I forget it. @sighswoon and Caroline Calloway are in this. Alice in Wonderland is in this. (I’m certain Merriweather Post Pavilion is in this, though I just can’t quite place it, but the timing fits.) David Lynch, Mannerism, all that self-imposed heartbreak I clung to and couldn’t cope with— It’s here too. And it’s finished (well, technically I have to wait a year! For it to completely dry in order to varnish!) My art guides kept me company as I sat without an easel, working until it just finally felt right. Here. Complete. Triumphant. Meaningful. If not to you, than to 19-year-old me who just needed proof she could finish something. That there exists a place to hold everything surrounding her: intrigue, pain, loneliness, inspiration, excitability. There’s room for it all.
