Remembrance

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This is an addition to the “I Love Paris + Roses” vein that runs through my work. After the not-to-be-repeated emergence of Eternal, the “clock painting” in 2015, I’ve been in the dark as to what would come next. I liked the circular motif of Eternal, which brought up the idea of a rose window from a church/cathedral.

For a long time I’ve loved the pattern of the rose window in Sainte Chapelle, the little church that is ensconced within the walls of the Palais de Justice (Hall of Justice) on Ile de la Cite – the opposite side of the island from Notre Dame de Paris. Unlike many (most?) rose windows it’s not a radiating pattern. Its pattern is called “flamboyant” because it evokes flames.

In the years before landing on this idea, I’ve played around with other images to combine with this lovely tracery – including a version of my self-portrait. This particular image of roses was from the same garden – the Jardin de Plantes as “Paris Roses” that I painted in 2005. I took it on our trip in the summer of 2017 and it was the latest iteration of images I’d put “behind” this window.

For some unknown reason, I was overtaken by a burning need to jump into it on Friday April 12, 2019. I had just finished “Lavish” – which had received such enormous praise that I was almost frozen in how I’d follow it. I had drawn and started on a rose and sage still life, but it wasn’t grabbing me enough to keep me from the impulse to set it aside.

After my Friday group ended, I projected and drew a quarter of the design on a piece of plain paper and then spent 2 hours cleaning up the drawing – and then took a photo of it. Over the weekend my job was to use Photoshop to remove all the white paper in the spaces between the tracery– and further cleaning up the drawing, before replicating it to make a complete circle/square. After superimposing on the new rose image, I drew it on Sunday morning and started in on the painting Sunday evening.

Late morning Monday, the 15th, I my dad called my cell phone asking if I’d heard the news about Notre Dame. I’m so glad it was my gentle, loving, protective papa who told me that it was on fire. At this point, it was still feared that it would not be saved. No, no, no! Like many of us, I plunged into grief at the thought of a world without Our Lady, without Notre Dame de Paris!

The intense emotion spurred me to paint with even more devotion Though it’s not the design from one of Notre Dame’s rose windows, the whole thing felt too close to not be connected up somehow.

I painted it in a particular sequence – first the four corners, then the nooks between the six heart shapes that make up the circle, then the hearts, one by one – and finally the star shape in the center – while leaving all the tracery white – no masking, just painting around. It took patience and dedication to make sure that all the colors and intensities were such that it appeared to be one image “behind” the white.

My initial plan was to leave the white – I wanted it to be feminine and lace-like. But once painted, it just looked unfinished. Figuring out what to do though, didn’t readily come to me. I made an attempt to make it look pearly with pale washes of blue, pink and yellow. I took an unfortunate foray with iridescent, silvery paint – which I then paid hell getting it (almost) all off. The last was an attempt at darker rainbow-ish colors. Nope, nope, nope! Now what?!

God bless the creative process and the mysterious source of ideas! It came to me to cover the corners and edges with a multi-colored brownish-ness that would evoke earth, with progressively lighter greens emerging – like vines growing towards the light in the middle. I had a new plan.

Doing the final painting was fun and easy. No image to look at – just mixing and blending colors. I let the playful part of me lightly brush some gold iridescent paint in the center. It’s subtle, but there.

The search for a one-word name had me bouncing back and forth between “Revelation” and “Remembrance.” The latter referring to the Sufi practice I’d learned from Mark Silver – to reconnect our hearts with the Divine. It also took me back to where I started this piece – with my heart very close to Notre Dame – Our Lady.

Then, just as I was finishing it, a dear friend Carol Torresan, very unexpectedly passed away, washing us all over with how precious life is, and how precarious it can be.
For Carol, for Notre Dame, for the Sacred Feminine, the force that grows from the earth toward the light: Remembrance.

April-May, 2019 – 29”x29” – Watercolor on paper