Getting Perspective

My therapist has a suggestion for dealing with my feelings of low self esteem. He said that I should sit back in my mind, and observe myself having these feelings. The most persistent one is that I'm a failure as an artist and ought to kill myself. Detach from the negative feelings, he said, don't identify with them, and try to live in a present tense that is not, (I suppose if I do it right), suffering from the feelings. When I get self hating thoughts don't live with the self hating thoughts (because they will control and like a bad path, lead to more and more pain) but instead view them from a distance where they don't control. Blackness leads to darker shades of blackness, you have to exert control and purposely change your mind or else you suffer mightily. A watcher exists within everyone and this is your higher, purer, saner self.

I said to my therapist, "That's a Buddhist technique" and he said that in all the reading he's done about spirituality, in any religion, they all suggest this form of mental detachment to obtain peace of mind.

Two weeks ago I got a phone call from a little old lady from church to update me on some of the lives of other little old ladies that I know from church and a church reading group called "women's spirit". One lady had her husband die on her, and my husband and I went to his funeral last Saturday. Another lady, who I secretly call my little fountain of joy, had been diagnosed with forth stage pancreatic cancer and was being transferred from a hospital to a nursing home. It was all grim news.

The woman whose husband died had been married for 59 years, had three children, oodles of grandchildren, a career as a nurse, and has a mind that I really admire. She is the main person who runs a volunteer food pantry one town over, and she and the people who work under her feed a lot of poor, needy people with really good food. Not only does she organize and run the food pantry, but she volunteers once a week playing the piano and singing at an institution for badly brain damaged children. Most of the children are so sick they don't talk or even open their eyes, but they seem to respond happily to the music. Live music hits them on a gut level. She did all this and took care of her husband who was badly diabetic and in poor physical shape. She cooked, cleaned, kept house, and accompanied her husband to his numerous doctor visits or hospital treatments. In our reading group, women's spirit, she is often outspoken and I really like the way her mind travels. She is interested in living life in the best possible way, not sinking into emotional mess, but carefully tending her thinking like it was a garden, and helping the strongest most beautiful emotions thrive. Spirituality interests her, of any religion, because it helps balance and promote peaceful thought.

Yesterday at women's spirt group I was describing how I push myself to paint even when I don't feel like it. I argue with myself, I play rock and roll music to try to soak up some of the energy of the fast sound, I basically fight back at the symptoms of amotivation that schizophrenia causes in me. It can be really hard to paint. I might look at the painting and know exactly where I want to put some color, but then I lack the willpower to lift the brush and make the stroke on the canvass. So I split into two parts, the sick part that doesn't want to do anything and the motivated part that has a plan, and wants to see the painting eventually finished. The two parts struggle, and usually, I win the struggle and painting happens. It may be that without the extra seroquil, I'm having a rougher time with the negative symptom of amotivation, even though I feel more awake and less drugged.

Joanne, this 81 year old woman who I admire so and who just lost her husband, said to me, what if you stepped back and observed the two parts of you engaged in this struggle to paint? And I thought about it, I thought about watching myself already divided, and I said, "I think that this third unattached witness is very forgiving." And Joann nodded like I had said something that she too had experienced as true.

I told my peer support group about the effects of extra Geodone and Seroquil together as making me feel super tough and nicely energized, and the group suggested I stay on the combination. But I told them I wanted a chance at loosing weight. And the group said that I wasn't overweight. All I know is that as the way things are now, after I eat dinner, I can stop eating for the day. It takes some willpower, but my willpower isn't defeated by the Seroquil. After dinner last night I was full, and I said to my husband that it was nice knowing that I wouldn't be in the refrigerator at 10pm having another meal. And true to my prediction, I didn't overeat.

I said to my therapist that even if I had never developed schizophrenia I probably would be in therapy for feelings of low self esteem. Somehow, I think they are an illusion and simple bad habit. For me they started in childhood. I remember about a month ago being in a church retreat with a new woman whose name was Cynthia who I immediately, instinctively liked. Cynthia was born in Ireland has has the most musical accent. She is also warm, intelligent, and sincere. And to my shock, after group had met for a while, she confessed of feelings of self loathing. She wasn't just sitting with these feelings, she was trying to combat them, but I wondered how such a beautiful human being could feel so low about oneself. And my first reaction was "Needless! Suffering occurring in the wrong place! Good people should know their own worth!"

I hope, that with age, experience, and the will to reflect and stand back from myself, I can try to live with more self acceptance.

Finished Painting

This is titled, "Croc Monster". It is small, 8x10 inches and done in oil on panel.

I'm pretty satisfied. The photograph looses subtle shades of color, but this is a colorful and busy painting. It is part of my monster series, a series where I get to free hand draw from my imagination and paint in a style that is freer from convention than what I'm used to, although, to my liking, not yet free enough. The challenge here was to paint as much detail of space and yet not intrude too much on the figures, to have them read as real. I wish I could do atmosphere, I wish I could do painterly, but I have to experiment if I'm to head in that direction. I fear that as much as I try, I can't get away from the self-taught primitivism of literalism. I'm like "oh, don't smear the paint!" and work with tiny brushes, making tiny shifts in color.

Originally the redish fox monster was a plant, but I thought "too boring" and painted over the plant. Unfortunately the lines of the underpainting are present, like wrinkles on the canvass, and it would have been nice to have planned the painting from its drawing conception with the extra monster being built up from smooth primer. I must remember - get the drawing right! And more monsters, the merrier!

Yesterday I painted for three hours straight. Wiped me out. Today I noticed difficulty in painting. At first the decisions were easy, but then I lost energy and it was hard to execute on the painting the idea I had in my mind. I could see what I wanted done, and yet, I didn't have the willpower handy to move the brush. I would listen a little to music, and then summon my guts, and do a little painting. It was stop, go, stop, go, and I believe this is because of the schizophrenia. Working is hard because I lack willpower, but luckily, my personality has determination. I was going to sit in front of the painting, even if I just stared at it, until I got the energy to finish it.

Last Monday I met with my medication nurse and she told me that she had read new literature on my main anti-psychotic Geodone that said it was safe to prescribe a higher dose. I wanted a higher dose so that I could get rid of my second anti-psychotic, Seroquil, which causes weight gain in me. For two days now I've been on maximum Geodone and my apatite is something I definitely can control. Happy am I when I leave the refrigerator alone, and don't open the kitchen cabinets, on a hunger driven quest for food! Should I grow unstable on the maximum dose of Geodone than I have to add the Seroquil again, but there is a bright side to this eventuality. Extra Geodone, pluse Seroquil, makes me into a very strong and capable person. For the few days that I was switching over and titrating the medication I was energetic and happy and busy. I just don't get the same symptoms of my schizophrenia with the extra Seroquil, mostly, a feeling of being brittle and emotionally fragile. I'm afraid that on Geodone I will always have times of feeling that the world is too much for me and that all I want to do is withdraw, the trick is, can I still function and not tip into depression, paranoia, and suicidality? How much sickness can I bear in order to fit into smaller sized clothing? Will the extra Geodone really replace the Seroquil in some small, but essential way? Have to wait, take the medication, and learn.

Without the Seroquil I'm also sleeping differently. Its nice to wake up in the morning not feeling medicated for two or three hours. I find that the transition from sleep into work is much quicker - I've got energy and can shake off the sleep quicker. Instead of starting to paint at 11 or 12 I'm ready to go at 9am. This means I can fit more activities into my day - as long as I'm emotionally up for more activity. Schizophrenia for me makes me wish to pull into myself like a snail pulling into its shell.

I'm going to buy another 8x10 gessoed panel and plan another oil painting monster. I think the next one the monsters should be interacting with one another. Not simply standing as though they are posing for a photograph.

New Drawing

This is a painting I owe as an exchange of gifts. E made my website, I owe him a painting.

The drawing is just a plan for a painting. There's a girl in a yellow dress standing next to a cougar, oh well, I don't know what kind of cat it is, but the cat has spots and has more orange than the pale yellow dress of the girl. There is a large bat in the air over them. E likes bats. Any painting I make for E has to have a bat in it. The girl and the cat stand in a field of little purple and white violets, the flowers get smaller as they recede into the distance, as do the trees. In the background is a castle and water mote and a galloping horse. Mountains in the distance, and the sky behind the bat is a glorious sunset, shades of red, pink, orange and then a blue that bleeds into purple. The greens of the land will vary too; the flowers and trees will be one green, the grass another green, and the mountains in the distance will be less green, shifting to blue. Don't know yet what color the ribbon in the girl's hair will be.

E said he likes color and except for the black of the bat, I think I can give him a lot of color in this painting.

The drawing took almost exactly five days, started it on a Monday and finished it on Friday.

Yesterday I was working on another drawing, which happens to have a different type of bat in it. "Draw the bat first, and the rest of the things will fall into place." So I drew half a bat. I looked at the clock and it was only 9am in the morning. But I was tired. And I got mad at myself. "You've only worked half an hour, and your exhausted? You can't be an artist like that. You have to do more, everyday. Maybe if you listened to some music, the music would give you energy and you can draw some more." So I put on some music and listened quietly. Still no energy to draw more on the bat. So I talked to myself again. "Just the ears. That's all you have to draw. Just the bat ears." They were rather large ears. And I started drawing them. The music must have given me some energy because then I started on the second bat wing. I did most of it, but lost my concentration again when trying to draw its foot. So the bat only has one foot, but it is mostly complete. I think by the time I finished drawing it was 11am, a good chunk of time had gone by. Some of that time I was simply listening to music and trying to find the willpower to return to my drawing. Empty time, sitting alone, staring off into space, with a fog of mental resistance inside of me.

Willpower and the concentration to carry out a task is something that my schizophrenia takes away from me. I have to carry on internal conversations sometimes to boost myself into action. Walking downtown? No easy undertaking. But it was what I wanted to do next after drawing the bat. I had to push through mild or moderate paranoia, fear of people and exposure under the open sky. I have to push through these emotions, at least lay them aside with something very similar to courage. It feels like I have to summon courage to walk downtown by myself. But yesterday the sun was shining, and I was wearing a pretty skirt and jacket with scarf, and by the time I arrived downtown I felt capable of hanging around in some of the stores. Once I had put the plan into action, I felt a little carried away with it. I was downtown, in a mass of colorful, happy people, and I wanted to stay downtown. Maybe it was the good brain chemicals released by a little exercise. I actually had the guts to walk into an art gallery and have a conversation with the gallery owner. I critiqued her star artist's latest show.

If E doesn't like the plan for his painting I guess I'll have to draw him something different. But I hope he likes it. It is hard to tell, just from some pencil outlines, what the final thing will look like.

Have to draw a pig holding a gun tomorrow. A tough image.

But I like the challenge.

Vincent, Theo, Beauty and the Beast

My husband has made several observations.

He ordered from Amazon the complete seasons of the TV series "Beauty and the Beast". After we watched the first episode (I had never seen the show) he turned to me and said, "I am like Beauty and you are like the Beast. I get to live in the sunlight, in the social world, having a normal life, and you have to live underground, away from sight." I can only assume that he felt that while the Beast was physically disfigured, I am mentally disfigured. But it is true that the number of social interactions I have during the day is limited, has to be limited. I can't bear too much social contact. There is a great degree of self imposed isolation in my life.

For instance, this Sunday I have to limit myself. I want to go to church, haven't been for a while, but it is Mother's Day and I'm giving a lunch for my mother. It crossed my mind that I could invite her to go to church with me, and that we could lunch after. It sounds so simple, one activity smoothly flowing into another, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid that going to church will so deplete my emotional reserves that after I will have to struggle through lunch, sitting at the kitchen table with my head down, staring at my food and making no conversation with my mother. I want to do both activities, go to church and socialize with my mother, but it seems that I have to choose. I don't have the mental resources to do both.

And, after watching a documentary on Vincent Van Gogh, my husband announced, "I am like Theo and you are like Vincent." This too seems to be correct. My husband works and provides for me and I have enormous freedom to focus on making art. Theo provided Vincent with everything from money for rooming and food to canvas and tubes of paint. In return, Vincent wrote to Theo almost every day. My husband can't get out of his head the fact that Theo died six months after Vincent's death - the two lives seemed so existentially linked. In fact, as my husband views it, my only responsibility is to keep myself well - making art is just a bonus. My job is to maintain emotional stability, keep myself out of the hospital, and keep myself from harboring thoughts of suicide.

Monday I could not stop thinking, "If I had a gun, I would shoot myself in the head with it." It was a very impulsive and carefree thought - just do it, get it over with, end all suffering. Probably it was just me having a temper tantrum - life seemed too difficult at that moment and I wanted an escape. It was painful to be so focused on self destruction. The day prior, Sunday, we had had a long luncheon with my step-daughter and her boyfriend and my husband thinks the stress of that social necessity had caused me to become ill the next day. I know too on Monday I had several duties outside the home to preform - errands - and I had to start a new drawing and I was very unhappy with my creative powers. I got essential work done out in the community but I felt small and ordinary and lost when it came to starting the drawing. I think one of the worst things an artist can think about themselves is "I'm not creative".

Its' taken a week of effort at that drawing, but I should finish it tomorrow. I'm a lot happier with it now, it kinda sings to me and I'm excited to make it into an oil painting. It feels less of a failure and more of a success. When I finish this drawing I'm not going to start painting right away - I want to make a second drawing. I've got an idea, its pretty hazy and I don't quite know how I'm going to manage it, but the killing of Bin Laden cracked something open in me and I have to follow where it leads, and try to make it real. I've had reactions to world events before that prompted drawings. For the most part nobody would know that there is a connection unless I told them. I'm afraid that the only theme of my next drawing is violence. I'm so pro-death and anti-death, two directions in one mind, that the result is imagery that seems absurd and ridiculous. A picture that could never make sense literally. I'm reminded of the Dada movement in France, how the artists reacted with the urge to make nonsense after the horrors of World War I.

I feel very patriotic - I'm proud of President Obama for the risky decisions he made and I'm proud of the SEALS for the heroism and steel that is part of their nature and I was deeply saddened by the events of 9/ll, but I'm also against killing, murder, and assassination. I believe in locking up sociopaths to protect society from them. I understand that killing the bad guy is cleaner, cheaper, and less problematic politically. Most people equate revenge with justice. So I can see all the options and I can't choose. In essence I'm no good at making any decision except for color - and I wish all my choices in life had to do with nothing more beautiful than to put one color next to another color.

The violence in the world, and the desire to do violence to myself, is almost too much to bear.

I think art is an escape for me.

I think I make art because I have to make art. It has become a survival tactic.

David Hockney

The dark mood is lifting. This morning the world seems bright and open, ready for me to make a mark on it. And that is in a nutshell how I see the world, a place to make your mark in. I'm not going to be someone who leaves no footprints. But I know, thinking of lost art, thinking of how works of mine have already been damaged while I'm still living - that my trade, making pictures, works with fragile material. Paintings and drawings that I stored in the barn behind my house have already been ruined by fluctuating temperature and moisture. I've ripped work, I've cut work, work has developed holes in it or cracks. I'm so passionate about what I'm doing that I forget about past works, I don't care about past works. With me its always what is happening in the present or the future.

I saw a wonderful documentary about David Hockney and he was always taking about the now, the magical, "infinite" (that's his word) now. He's over 70, and for the first time, he allowed a filmmaker to film him while he was painting a landscape. It was marvelous virtuoso painting, directly from his eye to the brush, he sort of drew the scene without hesitation in oil, without much backtracking, only addition, and no erasures. The painting that starts this blog was in the documentary, and at the time he was kicking out a painting a day.

He said at one point that he has been privileged, and immediately I thought about all his wealth and fame, but his conversation was not going in that direction. "I've been privileged" he said, "because I get immense pleasure from my eyes. Its been that way my whole life". Another painter offered up an opinion why Hockney has despite his fame remained human and approachable. He said in essence that what matters the most to the man is making art, first and foremost, and that keeps him pure at heart. I know that when you draw, it matters not if it is from your imagination or a scene in front of you, but when you are creating you are immersed deeply in "the now". Hockney draws, and draws, and draws, he is addicted I think to it. He says that painters paint until they drop dead, and I know that this is the way for me. Even should I be confined in my last years to a nursing home, I will draw with crayons or colored pencils. I've been confined to the hospital and there I drew with colored pencils - rather nice drawings because I was crazy and the ideas came to me with all the gusto and vibration that a cracked mind can summon. They weren't ordinary drawings. I'm afraid that insanity for me makes me create darling things - primitive of course, but darling. The only sort of retirement I can envision is a shift from oil to a paper medium. Paper was my first true love and makes the least amount of mess - important to the institution that you are locked up in. Yes, I know how to live fully and richly while locked up, with any degree of dehumanization, and any curtailing of freedom, one of the legacies of the experience my mental illness has given me.

Tomorrow I'm going to paint a sky. I've had a Sunday painter ask me, after seeing one of my sky with all the subtle transitions of blue, how do you do that so smoothly? And I told her the secret was to use your fingertips to blend the paints. Fingertips blend more smoothly than brushes. I was once using my fingers in an art school, then wiping them clean with turpenoid, and the instructor had a fit. "That's poisonous, both the paint and the turpenoid. You don't want your skin to touch them. Put on plastic gloves, we provide plastic gloves." But I noticed that you lose control when you wear plastic gloves, so no plastic gloves for me, although I wash now the paint off my fingers with dish soap and hot water. I don't paint skies everyday, so I'm not worried about the little exposure I get to toxins. At least I don't get paint in my mouth. They say on the internet that the dirtiest fruit in terms of pesticides are strawberries, because their skin is so thin, it absorbs the most pesticides. If there is only one fruit you should eat that is organic it is strawberries. But I'm afraid that they are either unavailable in organic form at the grocery store or else they are past ripe and in poor shape, so I eat dirty fruit. Usually I don't even wash them. Oh, I'm such a dirty, foolish, lazy girl. I'm having strawberries and bran cereal tonight for dinner. David Hockney smoked continuously through-out his documentary, so I know probably what he will die of. He said that the bible only promises you 70 years, so anything he gets after will be a bonus. He said that he had only maybe 5 or 10 years left, there's no knowing, and then he went on to create one of the largest paintings in history. "That painting is all about David" said another painter, "its his King Lear moment. He's on a hilltop and he's exposing himself to all of us." What he meant, is that Hockney wished to show his talent, making what no other artist could, a lifetime of learning and practicing and experimentation, and then with this painting, he howled at the elements, and controlled what no other man could control. The painting, of a landscape, had 50 separate panels in it, that is what made it so large.

I'm afraid that my imagination has taken a dark turn for my large scale painting of Adoration of the Magi. In the sky, there will be evil angels raping the good angels. My husband brought on this new thought, he said that on the day that Christ was born evil took a terrible blow. So I thought, won't the minor devils be angry and take out their revenge on the good angel's of heaven? Leave it to me to put violence into Adoration of the Magi. Peace, serenity, adoration, love, on the ground near the manger where Christ was born, and a free for all battle in the sky. I'll be subtle about the rape.......... its a creative challenge to make rape subtle. In fact I may have to change the title of the painting to make it clear exactly what is going on. Or is it better to not tell? I guess I was a little hopeful that a good version of Adoration of the Magi could be put on display at my church, but if I stray too much from convention, no church display. Church is like the library, they want nothing too challenging for the public, most everything light and sweet. Right now in our Church parlor is a painting done by a member, so that's why I had my hope, but that painting is of a landscape in the autumn when the leaves have turned orange and red. I guess a crucifixion would have a place in the church, at least most churches, but not mine. We don't have one crucifixion anywhere that I've seen. And as a matter of fact, there aren't too many crosses either to remind one of the crucifixion.

Put on perfume this morning, and had a moment when I remembered why I started wearing perfume in the first place. One, it was to label me different from the homeless people that smelled bad. I was aware that I have a lot in common with the homeless, both of us being mentally ill usually, and I was doing what I could to distance myself from my brother's and sister's in humanity. And two, it was so difficult taking a shower that I wore perfume out of desperation, hoping it would mask any sweat smell.

Dirty, lazy, smelly, careless, risky and disabled. David Hockney said that he was NOT a decent person, and I wondered what secrets he hid from the documentary film maker. What he paints is the most decent of subjects, landscape after landscape. They would hang his landscape in my church parlor. I would say that I am a decent person, somehow I live my life contrary to Hockney, I've got very few pricks on my conscience, but what I paint is, I'm afraid, usually not decent.

The Crumb Effect

Last night I had a dream where I went off medication. In my dream, I did so to loose weight. This morning I contemplated going off medication for a different reason. I would like to switch my medication to the less effective anti-psychotic Risperdal, only a couple of milligrams, what I was on when I created some of my favorite, early drawings. I simply cannot draw today like I could when I was on Risperdal. I would like to be on Risperdal so that in this creative frame of mind, I could design the plan for my large scale Adoration of the Magi.

Yesterday I went to church and again had more visions of details of this painting. Not much, just some ways that clothing would be designed. You have three kings and a woman saint, all high royalty and all wearing clothing that is over the top,- fun, fun, fun.

I would go off Geodone and Seroquil, go on a minimal dose of Risperdal, do the drawing, and then go back on the Geodone and Seroquil.

I'm afraid that once I lesson my medication I won't want to increase it again, and do the execution of the painting while on Risperdal too.

Trouble with Risperdal is that eventually I was hospitalized while on it. I remember a lot of energy, a lot of boughts of paranoia, and then crushing suicidal feelings around Christmas time that drove me into the hospital. But I lived on that minuscule dose of Risperdal for over a year. And while on it, I had the energy to run.

Of course I've not discussed any of this yet with my husband, not my therapist, nor my medication provider.

It would certainly add one more twist to the video documentary of the making of Adoration of the Magi.

To put everything on the line, to live only for, the making of one painting.

My minister said that at a certain age, around the end of the teen years, the youngsters want their life to have meaning. They want so desperately for their life to have meaning, that they see things in terms of life and death. Existence is so pregnant, so ripe, so immediate for them, that they ask the same question to the minister in different ways; what is the meaning of my life? No other age cares so much. I suppose since they ask this question of my minister, they want to know God and how God fits into their life, - I think they ask because they are feeling especially close or alienated from God.

When I was on Risperdal, making my drawings, I felt so alive. For instance, I have never had so many memories of walking in the sunshine as when I was on that drug or on no drugs at all. Of course now I walk in the sunshine. But the memories don't form. Bliss isn't present. Or at least it is a milder form. I believe psychosis is partially a spiritual state. Maybe it is all spiritual. That's why it is in psychosis that the demons come to visit. And they give you a taste of hell and damnation and lies. Psychosis lies, demons lie. I don't have to take drugs to derange my mental state and experience a high of creativity, all I have to do is change the medication I'm on and use something that doesn't work so good. On Risperdal, I'm closer to schizophrenia in its natural form. I'm closer to me in my natural form.

The Crumb Effect is my theory of what happens to a schizophrenic when they realize the horror of their disabled state, especially, when they compare themselves to others who do not suffer from a mental illness. The Crumb Effect is crushing self hatred that leads to self annihilation, suicide.

Robert Crumb is a successful comic book illustrator. My favorite art critic, Robert Hughes, in a documentary about Crumb calls him the end of the 20th's Century answer to Hieronymus Bosch. Hughes says that the beginning of the 20th Century simply didn't have anyone like Crumb or Bosch. Sex, depravity, the id and the unconscious mind revealed, society dissected, all this is to be found in Robert Crumb's LSD inspired comics. Of course there was Salvador Dali in the beginning of the 20th Century, but Hughes doesn't mention him - even Dali the surrealist doesn't dig as deep as Crumb. Or so the documentary would have us believe.

In the first ten minutes of the documentary "Crumb" Robert Crumb mentions his older brother Charles. Charles is the reason Robert started doing comics in the first place. Charles was the one in the family of five children who was obsessed with reading and making comics, and he organized his siblings into a comic book making factory. Robert and Charles would have a drawing exercise where Charles would start the comic panel with one character, and Robert would have to finish it off with another character. Robert felt very much like he was always following in Charles footsteps.

Robert became a very famous comic book maker, and Charles? Charles became a schizophrenic. The documentary camera goes into the house where Robert grew up and we meet Charles who now lives alone with his mother, indeed, Charles never left home after high school.

It is an odd home that Charles lives in. The shades are drawn and towels stuff the borders of the windows. Much furniture in the home is covered with sheets and blankets. I noticed that Charles's bed is a naked mattress with a blanket and without sheets. Piled against one wall in his bedroom is a mountain of books that Charles reads and re-reads. The home is neat and without clutter, but on the floor, in hallways or the middle of the living room, are bowls with food and water for the cats.

I first saw the documentary when it was playing in theaters in 1994. I had never before seen a schizophrenic on film who was so honest, so forthright, and such a nice man - someone who could laugh at himself. I had seen propaganda put out by mental health agencies where recovered schizophrenics flouted their achievements, but never before had I seen a schizophrenic admit, like Charles, that they took a shower about once every six weeks, that they had lost teeth and preferred to go toothless and not put in the artificial plate, and that they didn't work, couldn't work, and didn't much leave the house. Charles achieved everyday pretty much nothing. I had never seen a schizophrenic be so candid for the cameras. Charles was smart, took his medication because he felt crazy without it, and yet didn't seem doped up. But he obviously lived the most marginal of existences.

Robert Crumb claimed that Charles had never had sex. Robert showed us the early comic books that he worked on with Charles and how Charles's mental deterioration could be seen in his artwork. Charles drawings become increasingly bizarre in high school. For instance, all his characters develop wrinkles or twists to their forms, the text begins to take over the cartoon captions leaving little room for drawing, and finally, in a mere mockery of the written word, there are pages and pages of scribble that from afar look like handwriting but up close were mere lines on the page.

Robert Crumb is filmed while he does the duties that are the consequences of his fame. He has art shows, journalist interviews, and a photo session with scantily clad models, who all have their butts slapped, groped, and judged by Robert. Robert isn't sexually faithful to his wife and she isn't faithful to him. Robert claims that the only woman he loves is his eleven year old daughter Sophie. Even their relationship doesn't seem quite right, because when Robert kisses Sophie's cheek she wipes off the kiss with a look of disgust on her face.

Robert says that if he doesn't draw he gets suicidal, and then he thinks a moment, and admits that even while he draws he sometimes feels suicidal. Charles had tried to commit suicide when he was younger; he drank furniture polish.

The end of the film has some brief words of commentary, where are the characters now? Robert has exchanged a suitcase full of original sketches for a home in France and has moved there from California. And Charles? Charles one year after he was filmed committed suicide. When I learned this, I calculated that that was probably the time for the documentary to be assembled, edited, and released to the public. And I felt certain that if Charles had not been filmed he would still be alive. Robert gave away Charles's secrets, innocently, because Charles fascinated Robert. And Charles gave away his own secrets, the secret life of a person sick with schizophrenia, because while the camera was rolling, he was in a safe place, in his own home, with his brother, a person it was easy to be candid with. I don't think Charles realized that he was also being candid with the rest of America. And I think Charles saw the film, was horrified at being so outed, and killed himself. At one point Charles admits to Robert that he feels secretly in competition with Robert. Well, clearly Charles lost the competition. In suicide there is a strong feeling of self hatred. Did the documentary make Charles feel self loathing? I think so.

I'm giving my therapist a copy of "Crumb" tomorrow to watch. My therapist thinks that there is no way I can link, on what little I know about Charles's circumstance, the film to his death. But I do believe if that documentary hadn't been made Charles would still be alive.

Nobody talks in recovery or therapy about the shame felt by the schizophrenic. Almost I get the feeling that people with degrees in psychology think we are too sick to comprehend our plight. Is there for the very sick a dumbing down, or turning a blind eye to social cues and ways? I know I've read studies about the shame felt of the unemployed, in these bleak economic times, and how this leads to depression. Well, unemployment is but one facet of the syndrome of having a major mental disfigurement. Again and again in "Crumb" we look at Charles's deviation from the norm. If Charles watched the documentary, at that point we have the "Crumb Effect" - it is a schizophrenic seeing themselves compared to normal, it is a schizophrenic seeing themselves portrayed without anything hidden, without any place to hide.

I don't want to make a documentary on the creation of one big painting, The Adoration of the Magi, and then kill myself because I hate the truths that are revealed by the film.

There are many differences between me and Charles Crumb. The first is that I'm productive and do art every day. Charles had stopped making art. The second is that I'm in a marriage, and Charles was alone. And the third is that I've already gone public with a website and a blog. I'm used to confessing.

But I don't laugh at myself the way that Charles laughed at himself in the film.

And I think when Charles actually saw the film, he stopped laughing at himself. I think the film made him want to cry.

Charles couldn't handle the pressure of being exposed. Can I?

Two Different Kinds of Love

Cherry Blossom lost a baby tooth today and I found her chewing on it. The red blood pulp was still in the tooth. I will save it in a little glass bottle with a stopper. Yesterday I took away from Cherry the toilet plunger (tasty I suppose), a penny, and the corner of a rug that she had flipped over. The day before Cherry chewed on the first book from my husband's library. I was waiting for her to discover the library.

Cherry got neutered last Friday. My husband and I showed her two very different types of love.

The day before the surgery I called the Vet and went over the instructions. What was most important was that Cherry not have food over-night or the morning of the surgery. If a dog eats anything they could vomit and while anesthetized choke on their vomit. So the evening before I instructed my husband to search the ground of our apartment for anything that could be eaten. Mom had visited that day and given her a cookie bone - could we be certain all fragments of the cookie bone had been swallowed? For a while there Cherry was simply walking around with the bone hanging out of her mouth like a cigar. I checked under the bed and removed a marrow bone that had not had all of its marrow taken out. None of her toys were leaking stuffing. After I woke on the morning of the surgery I kept Cherry in her crate, thinking, "as long as she is confined she can't get to anything and swallow it."

However, I found out later that my husband had reacted quite differently to the dangers of Cherry's surgery. The morning of the surgery she had gotten him up at 4am to pee, and he decided, since it could perhaps be his last morning with Cherry, to spend some quality time with her. So by 4:30 am they were walking down a deserted Main Street here in town. Of course there is nothing a puppy loves more than a walk, with all the out-door scents and the physical freedom. We live with houses close by on a semi-busy street and have no back yard, so it is not an option to let Cherry off a leash. My husband thought that this might be his last few hours with Cherry, so he was going to really enjoy her and try to give her the best time of her life.

So I was cautious, a planner, protective, and no fun. My husband was whimsical, impulsive, and lived more of an emotional life. Upon reflection, I think that what my husband did was foolish, because Cherry could have eaten something outside (for instance, cat or dog poop....... and my last puppy would eat dirt) but at least everything turned out well.

I have been bothered by something that seems like hypomania. Two days ago, while I painted, I kept on having conversations with myself. I had all these ideas to do a video and put it on YouTube. I interviewed people in my head. I said (so I thought) funny and provocative things. I had so much energy, but I had paranoia too, which made it difficult to leave the apartment. I was simply afraid of the world outside. And that evening I simply told my husband I felt crazy. I must have said I feel crazy five times. He put on a nature video, with documentaries of animals, very PG, no sex or violence, and the "I feel crazy" claim (with no symptoms except weird energy) sort of diminished.

Last Sunday, the day before I painted and felt crazy, was a beautiful day so my husband and I decided to walk to church. On the walk I was trying to explain to him why the Hieronymus Bosch painting of Adoration of the Magi was so new and different for its time. This is the painting that starts this blog. Take a look and you will notice Joseph scratching his head, two Kings ignoring the babe and having a conversation, two shepherds also pretty much ignoring everything and having their own conversation in the background. And in the far, far landscape, buildings that might be sized right for the 20th century, but that were never seen in the 15th century. Is that the Eiffel Tower I see? But during the walk to church I kept loosing track of my thoughts and falling silent. Twice my husband had to prompt me and tell me what I had been saying, and once I was still lost so my husband repeated conversation from much earlier, to try to help me find the thread of my logic. I said to him "I don't feel bad but my head is not working right" and he agreed.

While in church I still had Bosch's painting on my mind and I thought, "What if I do my own version of Adoration of the Magi? It is a theme that has been repeated though-out history, each artist with their own twist, what would my twist be?" And then suddenly my head was filled with a composition of characters, each with different body postures, and I saw their different clothing as well. It is rather easy because you know that you have the basics of Mary and the baby, Joseph, and three kings all in the setting of a manger. What I saw in my head I know has never been done before, and I was very excited. To make the vision as real as possible I would want to work from photographs, and pose people as my models acting out the gestures that are in my head. Here I met with a stumbling block, because I know so few people and I am shy, it would be hard to ask them to let me photograph them. Also this painting would be large, at least 36 inches square. My limit in scale is around 20x24 inches.

I usually don't get full blown pictures in my head of compositions. And then there was the excitement of spring, warm weather, and a muse, (or hypomania) saying, "Do it, do it, do it!" There would be the fun of drawing different animals in the manger, and then a sky exploding with angels. Yes, I'm afraid the painting would be the largest I've ever attempted, but maybe, if I took it in small steps I could do it. The first step is Easter. I assume I will be visiting my father, and I could take a photograph of him and my husband together and use that to settle the image of two of the three kings. My husband and father would be a great picture because their body types are so different, and contrast is a good thing. Then the next step would be a lunch in May. May is the month when my step-daughter and her boyfriend are scheduled to visit us for lunch, she's about the right age to be Mary and her boyfriend could be Joseph.

I recently got an email from a friend that made me laugh. He said I could print it;

Your plan?......You mean like "I'm going to keep writing til I finish my Vampire book".....or "I'm gonna write a book about living with a schizoaffective person.".........or "I'm going to knit a blanket.".......or, etc,etc,etc........Ha,ha you are funny sometimes........I think a lot of your stress comes from wanting to be accepted by people, and probably people you don't even like anyway.......LOL.......just find a close group of people you like, and just go with it......I can only name about 5 or so people who I would even want to hang around.....and when you pray pray like this.........

Dear God, I know I spend most of
my time painting little creatures
giving blowjobs, and monsters fucking. And
the occasional lady or man getting their
head blown off. And oh yeah, naked animals
with their genitalia hanging all over the place,
but I'm a good hearted woman, I really am. Ok, so
can I have like 100,000$ to go shopping.......

and it shall be yours....ha,ha,ha

suck blood!,

Fangs!

He once gave me the honorary title of Karen Von Drac, since he said that I was a descendant from the highest of all bloodlines, Dracula's, and that is the way I now sign my emails to him.

I then pointed out to him that I do finish paintings, which is why I keep returning to painting. I think the plan I had mentioned to him was to paint for five years, keep the paintings, and then try to get into a NYC art gallery.

If Adoration of the Magi is the biggest boldest painting I've ever attempted, wouldn't it be cool to do a video documentary of me painting it? All I've got is a plan in my head, nothing yet, not even a sketch on paper. I could show the whole progression of the painting, from start to finish, on video.

The only problem with this is the "Crumb Effect". That is a theory I have about mass media and schizophrenia. I'm too tired to explain it now. But I'll make the "Crumb Effect" the topic of my next post.

Bullet

This drawing is 20x24 inches large, the exact measurement of the canvass. This is the way to read the drawing. There is a tree on the left and its branch extends out over the top of the painting. Coiled around the trunk of the tree and its branch are two thing; a garland of flowers and leaves and a black piece of rope. The black rope is just a line, but it ends up forming the sides of the swing and suspending the cat in mid air. A piece of the flower garland hangs down off the branch on the right of the drawing.

On the swing is a model wearing a Balenciaga suit. On her head is a black hat made out of long feathers. Her feet on the swing are bare. On the ground is another model wearing a Balenciaga evening gown with black gloves on her hands and a gold necklace around her neck. A bullet has just entered her forehead and exited in a red mess through the back of her head.

All the cats will be shades of grey and black. The hat is black, as is the cape on the evening gown. All the space between the cats and the models looks empty, however, I will fill it with shades of blue and perhaps shades of pink and orange at the horizon line. I really don't want any empty space in this picture, I want it to be as dense as the garlands of flowers, so brushwork, auras, and glazing and scrubbing of paint will all be happening, I mean to make this painting as busy as possible with as much texture and color as possible. The only spot where the color red will be used is to signify the blood coming out of the model's head. This isn't a steadfast rule, because I may get tempted to use a shade of red (pink, purple) on some of the flowers. However, the painting might be more powerful if there were only one place where red is used.

I won't begin work on this painting for a little while. I have another painting that is dry and ready to have some rolling hills of green put in.

Its just warm enough to work without the propane heat on. But if I'm suffering I'll put the heat on. Wearing wool sweaters and layers of shirts. Cherry Blossom is sometimes loath to be cooped up in the bedroom, the only place where there is heat. But baby has to adjust. Today when I finished the drawing "Bullet" I did it while in bed. Took pity on Cherry and went for a walk with her in the rain before the drawing was done - exercise didn't seem to lesson my concentration when I got back and this surprised me. I had an umbrella, but Cherry got wet. Didn't seem to faze her. Its been raining for hours, and I may take Cherry for a second walk this evening, my husband has to work very late tonight.

I've still got my table easel on the kitchen table and this table is a mess with all of the stacks of my visual reference books used during the planning or execution of three different paintings. Oh, and there's a Bible, CD's, brushes, potted violets that are half dead and a large tin full of paints and a box for a new camera with camera instructions too. My husband doesn't complain about the mess, bless his good nature. But I'll be glad to be back in the art room and put a table cloth, candles, and cut flowers on the kitchen table, making it lovely as usual. I'm back in the art room probably by this weekend. Have to clean that place too. We've got too many books. And I've got an electric blue coat that I don't know whether to put in my closet or donate it to the Salvation Army. Am I too old to wear electric blue fur? My gut says yes. My mother gave me a box of glass crystal and silver candle sticks. These heirlooms are designated to go on a shelf that has yet to be built, so for lack of space they got put on my art room sofa - where the electric blue coat lies as well. Maybe this weekend I'll have my husband build that shelf.

Just bought in a second hand book store a small book on Hieronymus Bosch and a large book on Magritte. I don't have much in common with Magritte, but it was published by Taschen which is my favorite book publisher and it was in mint condition. Bosch will definitely be used for inspiration. And on second thought, maybe Magritte will inspire.

Yesterday very sick, but managed to work on the drawing never-the-less. I'm having suicidal thoughts and it occurred to me that "Bullet" was planned while I was feeling perfectly well, and yet, it has a fantasy of violence that mirrors my own when I am sick. I see my art coming from a disturbed mind, even when that mind is serene or merry, the themes in my art are sick. I showed an earlier version of "Bullet" to my mother and my best friend while they were over for lunch and they said, "Take it away, take it away!" They couldn't bear to look at it. My best friend really, really likes cats, she likes cats better than most people, so what I had done to a cat upset her. I said to her "at least the rope isn't around its neck, what's so bad about rope under its armpits?". It's ironic because I'm trying to make "Bullet" as beautiful a work as I can. All those carefully drawn blooms and leaves. Stylish ladies.

Last night my husband said there were white circles around my eyes, like a raccoon in reverse. And he said that my aura was about as gray as he's ever seen it. He was rubbing my feet, and we were talking about the book Walden (hate it so far, I'll explain once I've read a little more, but when he said in the beginning that he has learned nothing from older people, and that there is nothing at all to learn from the experience of your elders - that really pissed me off, since my favorite people are the wise little old ladies from church) so you've got foot rubbing, intellectual conversation, and I'm thinking about cutting my wrists. My husband said, "if you really want to be punished and hurt I'll spank your bottom really good" but I wasn't even tempted. Instead I got in the car and drove to McDonalds and got a large chocolate milk shake. Right before they made my milk shake they had made a mint milk shake for someone else, but the ice cream got contaminated in my milk shake so I had a chocolate mint milk shake and it was really, really good.

No suicidal thoughts today, it seems I have my feet back under me.

Henri Rousseau

This isn't one of Henri Rousseau's most famous works, but it showcases his style nicely. I love the business that the leaves of the jungle make, filling the canvass with energy, and how the figure is almost lost in the amazon growth of the foliage. Nature overwhelms. Nothing about a human can be as important as orange trees or big blue flowers. In Rousseau's fantasy human beings are as tiny as fairies, but here, it is the landscape that is magical. The growth of plants, fed only by soil, sunshine and water is a magical occurrence. And the jungle, which Rousseau never saw but liked to tell others that he had visited, is really, really overgrown and pushing the boundaries of what it can contain. There is almost no room for the human. But the picture without the human would be like a story lacking its ending. We know so much about the jungle because we have been given a person to put it all in perspective for us,- she small, the jungle large. Her dress is pink like the pink flowers just peeking through the leaves near the horizon of the sky. I too place pink where the blue of the sky meets the earth, but for me, the horizon light itself is pink.

My husband bought a big picture book all about the artist Renoir in a thrift store. Two nights ago I had trouble sleeping and started reading it. The book started with the artist's early years, showing in pictures and narration his life and artistic development. There was schooling and there were friendships struck up with other artists, particularly with the impressionist Monet. The story of Renoir's life was well told, but it began to trouble my nerves greatly. There were illustrations of paintings that were masterful, and which I knew I could do nothing near as well. Renoir had the history of painting behind him, in his head, and at the command of his brush. No matter his later innovation, he was fluent in academic and he spoke well and long with the exact people who would press forward and bring into the world a new style of painting. He had links to contemporaries that were emotional, real, and instructive. He was situated in society in the best way that an artist can be and while he undoubtedly had talent he was no outcast,- the new style of the impressionists had grounding in artist's discussion and joint interpretation. In short the man had none of the isolation and none of the awkwardness that I feel so strongly in myself. I felt as I read that as I read about Renoir I was reading about a King Midas who was blessed with the magic that everything he touched turned into gold. And I stopped reading because the ease in which Renoir progressed into a great painter sickened and oppressed me. I could not relate my life in any way to his life. And my art looks nothing like his art. So I put the book away and took out a book on Rousseau.

Here in my big book were Rousseau's first paintings - and how primitive they looked! At last a hero I can look up to who has feet of clay! Rousseau's great journey started with awkwardness and fumbling innocence. Could he ever really draw well? No. He had to try as hard as I try. I can't really draw all that well. Did he go to art school? No, he said he first picked up a brush when he was 42 years old. In the beginning he had no artist friends. Even later, when artists began to notice him, their reverence had a tone of mockery. But what I see in Rousseau's paintings is that he tried so hard, and as he painted, clearly, he progressed. Pronouncements of sophistication are bestowed on you, but really, sophistication is a state of mind. There's a difference between saying "he's so sophisticated" and the intense judgment and intellect and vision that leads one to make a sophisticated product. Rousseau clearly felt his own sophistication even as others were announcing him as childlike and naive. He said to Picasso, "You and I are the greatest living painters, you paint in the Egyptian style and I paint in the modern style."

I'm certain when he delivered that line people laughed. But Rousseau had great belief in himself. I know that if I had a healthy mind I would too have great belief in myself. But my mind is sick, and the hours that I can make art are very few. I can't afford to cripple myself more with self loathing and despair, so I make art and try not to judge it. Just do it, I say to myself, and save the self reflection for the journey that every painting must take though its planning stages and execution.

These are my most recent thoughts for my next painting. Do I put flowers close together or far apart? Do I redraw the expression on the face and try to put something more tormented or am I satisfied with the model's vacant, pretty face? And how to draw a bullet entering and exiting a head? What is on the ground, grass, flowers, a ball of twine, or mice? There are already three cats on the ground, perhaps all these things go with cats. Do I paint red fingernail polish on the hands and feet? How high should the pink and orange horizon light go, should it just hover above the ground or take up space in a blue sky? And what blue for my sky, and should I not settle for just one blue, but instead, marry three different blues in alternating streaks? Should there be a aura around the figure, and if so, what color the aura? Am I prepared to give everything living an aura or only the people? Am I going to let the brush leave its mark or make transitions of color smooth and seamless? Where do I paint wet into wet and where do I let dry and then paint wet over? From what direction does the light shine upon my tree and other objects? Or is there simply the all over light of a primitive. How much reality and how much distortion of the objects? Is every line going to be crisp and clean?

If I don't leave room for experimentation and distortion will I grow bored with making my painting even as I am painting it? This last question is really the most important. If everything is decided upon ahead of time, execution is tedious because there is no room for later creativity and spontaneity with the paint. As paradoxical as it sounds, you must plan for accidents to happen. You just make the decision; in this space I will wait and see what my brush will do with the paint and where, according to whim, which color paint gets picked up from the pallet.

I've had a rough couple of days. Today and yesterday I drew. Drawing takes up so much concentration that I can only do it for about two hours. But the day before, when I did not get a good nights sleep, and after I had been pushing myself with activity, I was a mess. I went to my therapist's and talked with my eyes closed, head hanging down. I don't know why I didn't cancel, it was difficult driving there. That night I had an outing with my peer support group. I had to be present to buy food. My husband went with me. He drove the car, he socialized when all I could do was again hang my head with my eyes closed. I had to take orders of food, pay for everything, and take the cooked food from the counter to the person. My husband and I did not stay and eat with the others, we ordered a pizza to go and left once we had seen that everyone was settled with their food.

Emotionally I have been harsh and quarrelsome these past few days. I felt at times in the mood where I could hurt a person and suffer no regrets. Emotionally brittle, I had no humor, no restraint, no politeness, no smiles. There were things that simply had to get done and I had to do them - and I promised myself that with sleep, and days of freedom, I would get better. I only cried once. At my therapists I cried because I said I wanted to draw, but I had no concentration with which to draw. That night I read the Renoir book I was up until 3:30am. My therapist posed that perhaps I was a little manic, considering how much medication I take to get to sleep. And he said that March is a cruel month for people with a mental illness.

I would like to travel to Connecticut this weekend to visit with my brother and sister and my sister's children. They are all staying at my mother's. There is a scientist who has predicted a major earthquake in California where they all live so they fled to the East Coast. I don't know how long they are going to stay, waiting for this earthquake. It is one scientist who made the prediction, and since then, other scientists have stepped forward and posed opposite views - the majority of the earthquake specialists have not raised an alarm. Perhaps my brother and sister are also fleeing from radiation drifting 5,000 miles from the nuclear reactor crisis in Japan. Certainly they exhibit a need for self preservation that is mostly devoid in me. I went last weekend and slept overnight at my mother's. My husband stayed home and took care of the puppy. I am afraid though that now I am so fragile that I cannot make the trip again. This is a case of wishing, yet again, that I had more strength. I would then certainly be more social. But I must be the withdrawn schizophrenic. It is self preservation. Ah, so I do have some strong tendencies for self preservation.

I need rest, plenty of sleep, and days with few commitments.

New Direction

The first picture is by Max Ernst.

The second picture is by William de Kooning.

I think both pictures are fabulous.

Just put a wet oil painting to bed. It has to dry completely before I can work on it any more. Since I used white oil paint in thick quantities, this means probably two weeks. The white won't remain, I have plans to paint over it all using transparent paints. I have a high shelf that the cats can't leap upon, I put the painting there. In this household there is always the problem of an animal knocking something over or treading through it with their wonderful paws.

I'm using my brush in new and unusual ways and find myself lifting paint up with turpenoid and/or tissue, its a process of putting paint down and then taking it up again with just a faint residue remaining. There is a pull and push, you paint, you lift, you paint again, and then you wait for everything to dry so that you load more glazes of color on top of everything that you've done. As the painting stands now, only about 15% of the surface will remain untouched and be on view in the final product, a full 85% will get one or more layers of paint put over it. All I've got is a foundation. Much alteration in it's look will progress, that's why I don't bother taking a picture of it and publishing it here and now. You can't imagine the direction I mean to go. I will take a picture once its dry, before I work on it again, so that when its finished I can put on my blog a "before and after" sort of comparison.

I'm looking to put some mystery into my "croc monster" painting. I can't make myself alter the main figure much, I'm afraid to distort too much, but the background seems to be open season. I've done this before, painting an abstract painting behind the tightly wound depiction of a humanoid figure, and on one panel it worked and my father immediately bought it for $200 (the only time he's ever bought anything, he said he just had to have it) and on the other panel it was a disaster. So dabbling with the application of paint in an abstract way while you are trying to maintain a recognizable reality is not for the faint of heart. You can ruin a picture with over zealous creativity and invention - really I must remain clear eyed toward the final product and steadfast even as I am putting down strokes that have no meaning other than adding energy, direction, and mystery. This painting is rather small, and I want to try to get as much color and variety into it as possible, painting all over, the goal is to have in every corner something new and different. The last time I did this experiment the painting was 5x7, now the painting is 8x10. So I'm getting my courage up by working larger scale. It does take something like courage to go outside your comfort zone and try something that may or may not be a success. But I've got to grow. I see what I'm doing as growth. One can't get any tighter, any more anal, than the last painting I did, "Catfight". Ideally I want some areas of the canvass tight, with tiny invisible brushstrokes, and part of the canvass showing the touch of the brush, right down to the bristle lines. I've bought pallet knives but I don't have the courage yet to use them.

I watched a documentary yesterday about Max Ernst and it put me in a terrible mood. I love his work. But he is so much more creative than me. His drawing and painting skills are far superior. I'm aghast at what a fumbling primitive I am. And because of my illness, my work comes out in a tiny trickle, with Ernst it was a powerful river. There's a lot you can do when you can paint the whole day or night away.

Enough self disparaging remarks. At least I'm being creative most days. I've been skipping church and painting instead. I can't do both. Both activities are in the morning, prime creative time. And church, being social, takes so much out of me.

I've just finished reading a book about William de Kooning. It's called "de Kooning An American Master" by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan and it won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. De Kooning dedicated his life to making art and endured crushing poverty. And just about when he started getting noticed, and making money, he developed a big, bad drinking problem. It seems odd to become an alcoholic late in life. Makes one look for a trigger. Is fame really so bad?

I'll share some of De Kooning's point of view. It is the view point of an abstract painter, a man who has committed himself totally to painting and knows what it is like to mentally be inside of a painting. This made an impression on me.

"........drinking also created moments of strange beauty. In one story from the period, told in several different versions, de Kooning and a group of friends spilled into the street to get some coffee after a night in a bar. A bum approached asking for spare change. Someone gave the bum a quarter, which he then dropped. The quarter rolled slowly onto the avenue and into the oncoming traffic with the bum staggering after it, dodging the cars as they zipped around him. De Kooning, watching said, 'That's my kind of space.'"

I love the element of danger and desperation. Pathos, desire, drunken madness, the story of the bum and his quarter has it all. I want too not to be safe with my artwork. But this is so far from my personality, which is above all controlled and careful.

De Kooning gave a speech, or wrote a paper titled "What Abstract Art Means to Me" and it ended with a parable about abstraction. These are his own words.

"About twenty-four years ago, I knew a man in Hoboken, a German who used to visit us in the Dutch Seaman's Home. As far as he could remember, he was always hungry in Europe. He found a place in Hoboken where bread was sold a few days old - all kinds of bread: French bread, German bread, Italian bread, Dutch bread, Greek bread, American bread and particularly Russian black bread. He bought big stacks of it for very little money, and let it get good and hard and then he crumpled it and spread it on the floor in his flat and walked on it as on a soft carpet. I lost sight of him, but found out many years later that one of the other fellows met him again around 86th street. He had become some kind of a Jugend Bund leader and took boys and girls to Bear Mountain on Sundays He is still alive but quite old and is now a Communist. I could never figure him out, but now when I think of him, all that i can remember is that he had a very abstract look on his face."

Again, this story bumps into the realm of madness. The man from Hoboken is strange, maybe crazy, and de Kooning implies that the expression on his face has a quality that painters are looking for in their abstract paintings. Of course its one thing to be mentally ill, but I can assure you that neither de Kooning nor Max Ernst were mentally ill. Yet their art has sparks of madness in it. Is this what people are searching for when they say, "I want to do something creative in my life. My life is so predictable, house chores, a 9 to 5 job, weekends visiting friends, none of it lifts me up. I'm looking to do something creative to lift me up." I heard a woman recently speak these words. She was thinking about taking a photography or poetry course. Of course rather than madness, she may be searching for beauty, since the photography that she showed me were up close pictures of flowers. Earlier in this essay I spoke about wanting to give my current painting "mystery" - but the mystery of the two paintings that started this essay both are rich with madness. Every trait of madness - unpredictability, unreasonablness, the fantastic, extremes of energy, flight of the imagination, monstrosity, the presence of a forceful ego - all these attributes I see in the master's paintings. And all this I remember from long ago when I was psychotic at the beginning of my illness.

I'm as sane as I've ever been, now, stabilized on medication and having a stable lifestyle and home. And yet, in my art, I'm trying to break through a wall and paint more and more by instinct. And I'm hoping that my instinct has traits of madness in it, because this I know will capture mystery and energy.

Truly crazy schizophrenics I think produce very little. But if you're stabilized on medication you have a chance. Manic bi-polar people are a whole different kettle of fish. I think mania does give a boost to creativity. But psychosis in someone who has schizophrenia?

Psychotic thoughts are too much of a distraction for most artists. Psychotic thoughts feel very creative, but what actually matters is what you manage to get out of your head and put down on paper or canvass. And the process to a quality art product can be long and many stepped.

About the only thing I could do while I was psychotic was to go for very long walks that took me through several towns, while I looked at the spectacular breathtaking trees, because with my psychotic enhanced eyesight I had a crisp view of every leaf and I was able to hear every birdsong, and meanwhile, for psychotic reasons of my own, I was wearing no underwear.

So I walked and walked and walked, never tiring, and my boobs jiggled. That's my memory of madness.

New Stuff

The first image is a completed oil painting, 8 x 10 inches. It's called "Catfight".

The second image is a sketch for my next 8 x 10 inch painting. The working title is "Crocodile Monster". I intend on this one to paint quite differently than what I've just done. I want more freedom to experiment. It seems that whenever I paint a monster I feel like the figure and the space around the figure don't have to "make sense" and I can layer colors in intuitive, abstract ways. "Catfight" told a story, and in order for the story to make sense I felt like I had to paint within the lines, and do things in a very stiff, restrained style. All that careful shading in "Catfight", you loose a little of the shading in the photograph. But there are no surprises, no colors where they ought not to be, nothing that adds mystery in "Catfight". I'm disappointed with the finished product. Its a straight primitive. A little creativity in the design of the dresses, a little creativity in the subject matter (pulling hair), and I'm not afraid of bright color, but really no creativity in brushstroke or use of paint.

The last two images are icons that I designed for a flier. They are intended to add color and eye candy to a notice that I will design promoting my mental illness peer support group. This flier will be distributed to nearby hospitals and library bulletin boards and centers where the mentally ill receive services such as therapy, medication monitoring, and vocational rehabilitation. The support group I'm advertising was started by a bi-polar woman who intended it to be only for other bi-polar people, and she named it Changing Tides. When the group was opened up to include people with all sorts of mental troubles the name stuck. Mental illness sure does make your state of emotional being an ever changing ride. I need to have imagery that had a lot of color and that illustrated our name, Changing Tides. I figure the red and blue wave can be a small icon on a business card, and the larger design with the sun burst can decorate the bottom of the flier.

Lent Musings

Everywhere we go, on the street people say "Look at those huge paws! She's going to be a big girl!" But I notice more her ears, which in proportion to her skull, are a bit like bat wings. In prior puppy pictures her ears were flopping over at the tips, now they stand usually straight and perky.

My husband likes to call her a perfect little German Shepherd. Yesterday we went walking with Cherry Blossom to a coffee house that welcomes dogs named "Moca Joe's". It's slightly seedy, very bohemian, and underground. The windows looks out at people's feet on the sidewalk. My husband spent the whole time we were there talking to Cherry and practicing commands, sit, stand, down. It seemed a little eccentric, because my husband was loud, and he had warm, warm honey poured all through his voice. He talked to Cherry like a man enamored with his sweetheart. I was so tired, at 5pm, and this is probably the reason I was so severe with my regard. I kept my mouth shut but I was a total witch and found a situation that was perfectly innocent and endearing, to be as annoying as all hell. When symptoms of my illness hit I get cranky. By the time we returned from the coffee house I was so fragile that I couldn't stand to listen to my husband tell me stories from his day at work. His light banter was over-stimulating me, and I almost, almost, told him to stop speaking. When I'm at the end of my rope I need silence. Following the conceptual trail of someone addressing me when I'm symptomatic is almost impossible. But I did not ask my husband to be silent. What helped a lot when we got home is that as he talked my feet were in his lap and he was rubbing them. He gave me a half an hour foot massage. And it helped me rejuvenate. I had to recover control over my mind because in a short period of time, I needed to participate in a mental illness peer support group at a local hospital. And I'm leader of the group.

The people who fund our group (State money) don't want there to be a leader of the group. In fact, I'm not supposed to call myself a leader (politically incorrect) I'm supposed to call myself "lead facilitator". But every three months I spend about two hours typing up a report so that we continue to be eligible for funding. I'm the one answering the peer support telephone, fielding questions from strangers, and during group, I'm the one that the sickest people look at while they are telling their stories. Trust me, I act, I have responsibilities, and I work like a leader. And then there is the never ending problems with the idiot bank our account is linked to. I'm going to have to visit their customer representative with the "alternative facilitator" and re-submit personal information because the bank changed it's name, and I assume, ownership. Its a waste of my time, pure and simple. And after last night it looks like I'm going to be the one designing on my computer a flier to publicize our group to in mental health agencies around town. Need a graphic to catch the eye. So, artist that I am, I have to come up with a drawing that is compatible with our name, Changing Tides. Also, a small logo for our business cards would be nice. I would have more enthusiasm for these projects if I weren't so focused currently on my painting.

Yesterday I had to rub out the wet painting of a tiny horse because compared to the other horses painted next to it it was too small. So this morning I re-drew it larger, traced the drawing, transferred the tracing to the painting surface, and painted the horse again. The final product is a huge improvement. But I was sad when I stopped painting. I stopped painting because my concentration had deteriorated. I wish my concentration wouldn't deteriorate after just a couple of hours. My therapist thinks that "healing" (his favorite word) can happen and I can have more hours concentrating eventually. After healing occurs I should be able to paint longer. I just don't know. I think that if I were single I'd be able to, after a period of six to seven hours of rest during the day, have a second shorter period of creativity in the evening. But currently I do activities with my husband in the afternoon when he gets home from work and this pretty much completely burns me out. Writing this blog will burn me out totally, but happily we got from Netflix a light comedy that we plan to watch this evening. So burn, burn those brain cells, because this evening I plan to rest and be entertained on the television.

I published on this blog a little while back my Lenten essay for the booklet put out by my church. Lent started yesterday, and each day you are given four different scripture portions to read, and in the booklet, is a musing on these assigned scriptures by a co-member of the church. When I got my booklet I zoomed ahead and read, fueled by curiosity, what other people had written. I was struck in particular by the man who was assigned the day before me. He wrote a poem and because we are ordered by date, he is on the pages right before me. There is a striking contrast between what we have written. If you are perceptive you can see that our world views would be completely different if it weren't for the fact of his spiritual discipline.

I'll tell you my impression of this man and then publish his poem and explain how he and I are different. He is a retired minister about 70 or 75 years old. I talked to him once during coffee hour and he pretty much dismissed me as not being up to his intellectual standard. He comes off as dry and humorless, but very intelligent. He is not above dropping important names of important people he knows. I know his wife well and she is very religious and just as serious as her husband but a little more approachable. It must be because of the innate charity of the female kind. I think they both went to Columbia University and met there, and I know she is always reading issues of "Foreign Affairs", a magazine that is the epitome of intellectual analysis of world events by some of the brightest minds in our government and university system. Once upon a long time ago, when I was going to the library every day, I would occasionally read "Foreign Affairs".

Here is his poem. I ought to publish his name, giving credit where credit is due, but if I did that I could not have just said the slightly critical things I said about him. I may be mistaken, or unkind, because I really don't know the man and thus am unfair to him. Best he remain anonymous. However, I admire the poem, the spirit that lies behind it, and his guts to write a poem in the first place. Nobody else in the booklet wrote a poem.

"Borrowed Life"

"All that borrows life from Thee is ever in Thy care." - Isaac Watts

Whose life is this?
Surely it's mine.
If I possess just one thing
it is my life, body and mind
What I do, good or bad -
constitutes life.

Because it's mine,
I cling to what I have,
hold close whom I love,
commit to group or nation,
If I can make these mine,
then surely my life is mine.
Then comes Isaac Watts, who says
I have life as a loan
extended one day at a time,
payable I know not when

My life is drawn on God's account,
owed to One whose wealth sustains
the brightness of the world all round,
the secrets of the darkest Deep,
the wonder of Eternity,
whose riches underwrite
each display of loveliness,
each joyous song of praise,
each act of love and hope.

Every day I can choose
to see that brightness,
plumb those depths,
sense Eternity in time,
know my debt to beauty, joy and love
offered by my Creditor.
And my death, when it shall come,
will be of little consequence,
for it pays back what's been lent,
and joins me to the Life
from whom I've borrowed all.

I read this poem and I was struck by the impression that this poem came from a mind that pretty much got what it always wanted and set out to get, and most certainly, has never been broken. He has absolute continuity in the sense of "I". When he questions what this "I" is, it is from a religious angle. He seems pretty humbled by the fact of his eventual death. I think it is death that really makes him reassess the illusion of the in control "I". Death puts everyone on shaky ground, but from the first stanzas, I don't think that this man has been shaken that much.

Schizophrenia teaches one strict lesson; you are helpless. The "I" is on very shaky ground. Recovery from schizophrenia is all about taking control and circumventing this state of mental helplessness and victimhood. But when the symptoms of the illness strike, be they positive or negative, your mind is taken away from your grasp and you are free falling through sensations that are not of your choosing.

After that Congresswoman was shot in the head I was reading all sorts of articles chronicling her recovery on the internet. Her husband said, that from her bedside, she gave him a neck message. He said that she played with his wedding band and took it from one of his fingers and put it on a different finger, an intimate game they had played before. All this while a portion of her skull had been removed to prevent damage from brain swelling and she wasn't talking. And her husband said that he wanted her to make such a swift recovery that when he commandeered the launch of the Space Shuttle in I think April or May, she would be there at command central witnessing his take off.

But I thought that what one doctor had to say about head gunshot wounds was very telling. The doctor said that after rehabilitation, the Congresswoman would have to come to know a new normal. The husband wanted his wife back perfectly intact, and like the commander he is, he saw recovery as being something that you simply impose your will upon, and he had great faith in the will of his wife. But what is a new normal that the doctor was talking about? It probably means an alteration in the person, perhaps at a profound level.

I noted that the Congresswoman had married the Space Shuttle Commander in 2007, and I wondered, after a decent amount of time, whether there would be, despite the great love the media was chronicling, a divorce. Will the Commander accept a new normal in his wife? The Congresswoman has no choice but to try to live with what brain damage the bullet caused. The Commander was displaying superhuman optimism and very little patience. I've always said that my schizophrenia felt like brain damage, and the way it disables me, to this day, I say that brain damage persists. However, I too, with my personality and discipline, persist, and given the span of twenty years and a husband who gives me a very stable and stress free environment, I am the benefactor of a new normal. But I'm no fool. My pre-schizophrenia abilities and potentials were far, far greater. I may be wiser, I may be more compassionate, I may be more introspective, and indeed, I may be a better human being than I was pre-schizophrenia, but it is like a bullet went through my brain and significantly altered me.

I promise you, there is no way I would be painting little horses if I hadn't gotten schizophrenia.

On a good day, I like my new normal. But then again, I have had years and years of therapy. And the therapists have always sought to brainwash me into accepting my new normal. Because not accepting my new normal would have been the source of great anguish.

Part of rehabilitation is discarding the old and embracing the new.

Sanity is all about accepting paradox. Health becomes being schizophrenic. Its your new normal.

A New Painting

The way to read this painting is that the main scene is a dark rock cliff, with a stream on top, and a waterfall tumbling down into a pool of water at the bottom. There are, off in the distance, small horses that have poses that are catastrophic to their tiny riders. There is a small man at the top pulling apart an ivy plant, two more small men negotiating a blow job, and a woman perched on top a rock ready to dive into the pool of water.

I don't know whether the ivy on the cliff face will overwhelm the figure of the horse headed woman, I will try to keep everything on the cliff face dark except for her. What I've got here is just the first underpainting of her, there probably will be two or more layers of paint to make all her limbs rounded and her flesh white-pink with purple shading.

As you can tell, I drew the horse headed woman first, in a notebook, photo-copied the drawing, and then tried to invent a scene to put her in. I'm afraid that the scene could have been better. I would have loved a forest of pansies, roses, or weeds, tall plants that flowers all stand above her figure. Nothing else but her and leaves and flowers. That would have put all the emphasis on the horse headed woman. I could have had her figure against so much that would have made her stand out - the dark depths of a forest, a sunset........... once I drew her I had a devil of a time trying to figure out what scene she would fit into.

Her vagina is showing. That is the most lovely and disquieting thing about her. I actually drew her several years ago at the beginning of a painting workshop at a local art school. The instructor helped me with her hand. I remember not knowing what its size should be. Her figure drew inspiration from 1) an erotic photograph in a book 2) the photograph of an artist's drawing of a horse's head found in a book 2) the computer generated Poser figure of a nude my husband printed out for me.

Hey, perhaps there has never been a figure like her in all of art history. If someone buys this painting it will be because they liked her.

Planning the colors for this composition is atrocious. There's a landscape, rolling hills, there's rocks, there's sky and there's water, and of course, there are 56 ivy leaves. Each leaf drawn from nature. I really do enjoy drawing plant life from nature. When in doubt of colors, do underpainting! That's my plan. I don't know if the entire scene will be done in underpainting (limiting the pallet to three colors, flesh, white and ultramarine blue), there is a chance that at some point I'll figure out the colors (for instance, the blue of the sky and the blue of the water will be two different blues, cerulean and blue horizon, I think those are the labels). Blue horizon is pale and wintry, a cool color, and cerulean is tropical and strong, a warm color. One tube of cerulean blue costs like $35! Thank goodness I don't have to do an entire sky cerulean blue. The splash at the end of the water fall should be fun to paint. And oh, maybe I'll paint some ripples in the pool of water.

I'm taking my Seroquil as prescribed. Like Kate said, its best not to monkey around with brain chemistry. My depression has lifted with the beginning of this new painting and I'm excited. The drawing presents great difficulties - which is good, I won't get bored.

My husband noted that I had had a powerful dream the night before I wrote the last post. I don't remember my dreams much, but this one had me, upon waking, wondering so many things. In my dream I returned to college. I think a part of me would like to go back to college. This is the part of me that imagines that having more education would allow me to work, as if an education could suspend the negative and positive symptoms of my illness. There is, in our culture, the faint promise that education will re-wire your brain. Turn incapable to capable, turn ignorant into savvy. I know, little fool that I am, that taking a three hour volunteer job at the front desk of an art museum completely wiped me out. I know that doing an hour and a half of work on the pictorial directory that I had as a volunteer project with another lady from church made me sometimes sick as a dog. And I know that when I come back home from and hour and a half leading the peer support group I'm usually exhausted. I've got tons of evidence that my mental activity only lasts for a short time before my illness forces me to take a withdrawal from the world. I don't doubt that I could do the classwork for part-time attendance at a college, especially if the course was on-line. Reading, writing papers, this I could do. Because I would be working in fits and starts, a little here and a little there and every other obligation in my life would be suspended and deregulated to "not important".

Upon waking from the dream where I returned to college my groggy mind was full of "what if's" - what if I needed to drive a long way to go to a class, what if I took out loans to go back to school, what if I got sick because of the stress.......... I thought my dream was a sign of a new direction in my life. And then here is where the depression started which lasted through the day. College is a beginning, but it is an ending all in itself. It is an artificial life that does not necessarily translate into the real world. While you are in college and doing it you are full of purpose and self-esteem. The job of learning is fun for people who like mental challenges. And how nice to be able to have a label for yourself, "student".

But I know that having a degree will not mean that I can do a job. And I know that having a job does not mean that I would like the job I could qualify for. For instance, I would go mad having my husband's job because it would feel so bloody senseless. I've got to feel as though there is meaning and dignity and an end product to what I put my mind to. Having a finished painting is a nice thing of quality, a little "Hello, my life has some meaning." I can look at a painting as proof I exist. I'm not a drone, I'm not the same as anyone else, and nobody before me, or after me, can do exactly what I have done. I'm not saying I'm the best, because I've seen people who I feel are more creative than me or are at least creative in a different direction. What I'm saying is that painting requires me to use my mind and talent and I've been on my own relying on my own product, producing mind work every day, that putting me in a conventional situation, such as selling clothing or working a machine in a factory would make me think ill of my life. If I can't use my mind I'll be unhappy, but given the fact that I've got schizophrenia I can only use my mind for short periods of time.

How entirely lucky I am that for the short periods of time I have mental clarity, I have a task to do! And that is painting. For more than a year's time its been writing a book. Well, I've decided that some people know how to put a book together, and some people know how to put a movie together, but I know how to put a painting together. Give me pencil, a piece of paper, and I will plan a painting. Give me canvass, tubes of paints and brushes (ah, tiny brushes!) and I will execute my plan. Maybe throw in some innovation that wasn't in the original plan. I have decided that I really don't know how to put a book together. Nor even a short story for that matter. I can narrate what has happened to me and what I think, but this is not fiction. I'm not ruling out that I will never write a book, because someday I may stumble upon how its done. But there is far more satisfaction in doing something that you feel competent at, then doing something you don't know if it will ever see light of day. I know I can finish a painting. I don't know if I can finish a book. Confidence for me is a small, trembling, delicate state. My artwork, after all, doesn't sell. Well, that's not entirely true. Haven't tried that hard, and the best pieces get bought by members of my family or people who know and like me.

Tomorrow, and the day after, my mornings are free. Hurrah! I'll be painting.