Most of my life, oil painting has been my main creative medium. As I’ve been reviewing my life and contemplating how I will move forward as I heal from the strokes this year, I see there are markers that somehow show me the way back to me.
I began painting when I was eight years old. My parents were each attending college at the time and one of the required courses was art. One day I saw a paint box in our livingroom and it was filled with tubes of oil paint. I asked my parents if they’d teach me, so they did. Painting was safe for me… well, visual art. It was quiet and I could express myself any way I wanted to without speaking a word. I was an active, ebullient child who gradually withdrew and became very quiet as my home environment grew darker and more dysfunctional because of my mother’s emotional health. She passed in 1992 and I wish her soul peace. I have great love for both of my parents who passed years ago, years apart from each other. With that said, staying quiet was paramount to my safety at times. Art saved me. It gave me a way to speak. Even with having chronic health issues from the time I was 15 when my first lung collapsed, art was the quiet, still, peaceful way to let everything out.
Now, so many years later, I look back at the times when something else wanted to emerge and a bigger, brighter light wanted to shine in a different way. Reviewing my life since the strokes, I’ve been drawn to thinking about the slow dance and performances I’ve done in the last twelve years or so. I learned that I can sing and I learned that I can dance. I have even done multimedia performances with the intention of touching people’s hearts and bringing them a magical experience. I thought this was new but when I look back, I see that it wasn’t. It was in me the whole time. Even in our home movies taken when I was a kid, I was acting, performing, and hamming it up in front of the camera. It’s just that no-one saw me. No-one noticed that I had all this creative energy that wanted to come out and be expressed physically, through movement, sound, costume, and stories without words. I had to stay small back then, but it was always in me.
When I worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art after graduating college, one Monday afternoon when the museum was closed to the public but open for employees, I sat out on the front steps on my lunch break. A photographer was taking photos of the façade and I was the only person sitting on the steps. Eventually I saw out of the corner of my eye that he was including me in the photos, so I began posing. He came up to me after and told me I should be in movies. I had no idea what he was seeing in me.
Around that time, I met a lady named Josette who did tarot card readings, which she learned when she was in France as a teenager. She showed me a thick photo album of pages from a fashion magazine from the 1960’s and I asked her if she was the photographer. She said no, she was the model. I was often dangerously underweight when I was younger, but thin worked for fashion. I didn’t think I was remotely pretty but Josette told me that in Europe they accept all looks, not just the tall blonde models that were used here in America. She suggested that I go to France and give it a shot. I was surprised and didn’t believe in myself. I had no idea. I didn’t go, as I wanted to finish college. Looking back, I wish I had ditched the useless Art History degree (found out the hard way only a PhD will do in museums for a livable wage) and taken off for Paris.
A friend who I’ve known since we were fourteen reminded me that if I want to remember who I am, to look back at all that I’ve done. She also reminded me of the photo shoot we did with my college roommate Denise Sfraga in 1984 (one photo is above). There… that’s the spark, trying to emerge.
As I move forward and continue healing, I don’t know what will come. I’ve been painting circles. I also just bought a hoop for moving - a circle to dance with. One of my favorite quotes is by one of my biggest inspirations - David Bowie. He said, “I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.”
