Devotions

A Picture of Robin with his Sand Lizard. 5x7 in. Oil on Aluminum Flashing. 2023

This thesis show, like the hopes I had for my life, was meant to be different. I had grander plans, nothing concrete, but still - I imagined creating more important looking larger scale works, and a catalog to accompany them - all the markings to prove that this work should be paid attention too. My first solo show, and at a university gallery no less, was meant to be something else. However, fate had other plans. 

In the early winter of 2022, during the height of the pandemic surge, my partner of 12 years was diagnosed with late stage colon cancer. By the time it was discovered, he was two weeks away from liver failure caused by numerous metastatic lesions that spread from the primary tumor in his sigmoid colon. My partner, Robin, who studied probability and statistics among other things, told me that he had a 50% chance of living a year past his diagnosis, and a 7% chance of living 5 years beyond his diagnosis. Robin died this August, 18 months after the cancer was discovered. 

When your life has blown up and all the pieces of your hope scatter, things like having an important looking thesis show don’t matter much anymore, and finishing a program that feels intertwined with so much sadness and hardship becomes imperative. Life could actually be short, for you, or for me, as it was for Robin. And so, with that urgency in mind, I present to you my thesis show made up of small grief stricken paintings that I made after his death. The paintings are snapshots and meditations on the artifacts of a life that coexisted with mine, and things collected leading up to or shortly after his death.

When Robin was first diagnosed all the existential questions that I felt before, became the ever present self interrogation of why do I do this thing called painting. I actually don’t have an answer as to why I paint, other than I like doing it and that I’m probably too deep into a sunk cost fallacy. Over the past year, struggling with the confines of limited time and attention span, I began to make small paintings on gessoed 5x7 aluminum flashing. The framework was simple: find an object or two from my surroundings, spend a few uninterrupted hours paying respect to its existence, and perform a devotional act towards the practice of painting. 

So I followed this scaffolding for this thesis show. Selecting from Robin’s few material possessions things caught my eye, or held some significance, arranging them on a table, mixing the colors, composing a composition, and trying to make ephemeral things more permanent. These artifacts include a toy lizard made out of sand that Robin always had draped over his desktop computer, a jade wolf given to him by his deceased mother, his falling apart driving gloves, pictures of him from when our life was more simple and he was healthy, his old work id, a miniature copy of his diploma that he framed as a joke, broken butterfly wings I found on walks while he was in hospice, and the cobalt blue t-shirt that he married me in. 

These paintings are moments in time remembering moments with Robin. Though I cannot understand why Robin died so young, or what is the point of painting in this grief stricken world, I return to it because it provides comfort and an outlet during difficult experiences. I’ve been devoted to painting for 15 years, and to Robin for 12. These are my devotions to the greatest loves of my life.

Jade Wolf, Lizard, and Dog Pin. 5x7 in. Oil on Aluminum Flashing. 2023

Robin’s Glove, ID, and Mini Diploma. 7x5 in. Oil on Aluminum Flashing.

A Picture of Us When We Were Young with Wing and ID. 5x7in, Oil on Aluminum Flashing. 2023

Four Wings with Robin’s ID. 7x5 in, Oil on Aluminum Flashing. 2023

Robin’s Sand Lizard and Coin. 5x7 in, Oil on Aluminum Flashing. 2023

Four Wings on a Plate. 5x7 in. Oil on Aluminum Flashing. 2023.

Wailing Widow

MET - Egyptian Wing

9/19/23

I am a wailing widow. I wail and weep most days intermittently as I wander about the house. The wailing is sometimes short and soft.  Sometimes it is a cry that forms the name Robin. The wailing comes out of me unexpectedly triggered by almost anything that reminds me that Robin is dead. This wailing is different than the wail I uttered the day that he died. It is not as loud or as desperate. It is more defeated and resigned sounding. It is fortunate that I spend most of my time with Piper, so that I have permission to wail throughout my day unencumbered by wondering if it’s inappropriate or not, for me to be wailing in front of another person. Although, from time to time, when I let out a really loud one, the neighbors dogs will start barking.

The neighbors have not yet complained to me that I am being loud, so I hope that they do not hear me. I feel bad for Piper, to bear the brunt of all my wailing. She takes it fairly well though. Sometimes, if I collapse on the floor mid wail, she comes up to try to comfort me. But usually she seems a bit confused by the noise, and goes to get a toy hoping that I will play with her. This wailing, it’s different than crying. Infact, I’ve never had any reason in my life to truly wail thus far. I’ve been fortunate, to be protected for so long from a pain so agonizing, that wailing is the natural response my body makes. 

This weekend, when I went to New York City, I found myself desperately wanting to wail as I walked through the streets of Brooklyn to take the subway uptown to visit my Aunt and Uncle. My body ached holding in the wails. I felt it was unacceptable for me to let my body do what it needed to do in such a public place. 

On a whim, I visited the MET before walking over to my Aunt and Uncles on 85th st. I haven’t cared at all about painting since Robin died. It’s been hard to care about it since he was diagnosed with cancer. Despite my lack of enthusiasm I’ve continued painting for the MFA program I’m in. I don’t mind making paintings and I actually still enjoy it most of the time. It’s a peaceful, straightforward task that helps me enter into a meditative place that feels like a mini flow state. I haven’t cared to talk about art either, or think about it really, so I had no intention of going to the MET, but I felt the impulse to go, so I went.

I had just a little over an hour to look around. I gravitated towards the Egyptian wing. When I decided to go, that was the place I held in my mind. I wanted to see artwork that memorialized the dead. I spent most of my time there, gazing at the adorned sarcophagi, sculptures, masks, and portrait paintings of the deceased.  As I looked at the funerary portraits all I could think was, this, this, was somebody's Robin. The soft brown eyes of the young man could have been Robin’s gentle brown eyes. This is the thread that connects me to this ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. It is that they lived and died, that Robin lived and died,  and that somebody wailed for them like I am now wailing for Robin. 

Somehow, this thread that connects us comforts me. It offers me perspective on the micro and macro-isms of life. It says, this is how it goes. This happens to all of us. Everyone is going to lose their Robin, and in turn be lost. We are part of something bigger than us, something that is unexplainable. But I think this unexplainable-ness  must be part of the same thing that makes the universe continuously expand. 

I found myself profoundly touched by the sculptures as I pondered this thread, feeling the importance and purpose of art more acutely than I had in a while.

MET - Egyptian Wing

MET - Egyptian Wing

MET - Egyptian Wing

MET - Egyptian Wing

a memorial to a carpenter bee

I want to make paintings about sweet, heavy, easy things. Paintings of a carpenter bee that just died in my classroom. A fake piece of cake. Heart tacks and keys. Nothing too heavy, though. My life is just too hard right now. It is the heaviness that draws me toward the sweet little meaningless things. I remember that my Robin never wants to watch sad or dramatic movies. "Life is just hard enough as it is," he says. It's true. I agree with him now. It's just too hard. So I choose little unassuming things and spend a devotional hour or two painting them.  

When I began to paint the carpenter bee, it had been lying on its back for a day or two on my classroom floor. Prior, it had been buzzing furiously at the windows. I suppose it was cruel negligence that I did not try to let it out. I was busy - and afraid it was something with more of a sting. Frequently, wasps and other winged stinging bugs come into my classroom. Desperately running up against the windows, they grasp at the outdoors that are so close but impossible for them to reach. 

This carpenter bee, I thought, had buzzed its last, lying on the floor earlier in the day. It was quite a large bee, so a student spotted it. They walked over, crouched down, did not touch it - but laughed cruelly at its suffering walking away. 

Later, it seemed still - like it had moved on from this plane, so I went over to it and found it was ever so slightly alive. The once loud and vigorous breaths now contained soft pauses, and subtle shaky inflections. I picked it up and brought it over to my still-life window, laying it on a pink cloth. I arranged it a little while it was still moving ever so slightly, its labored breaths held even more gaps. There, on the pink cloth, with some heart tacks placed around it, the carpenter bee was in hospice. It was a bit intense to watch it take its last breaths, to struggle so much, continuing to try to move around. After a few minutes, I focused on the painting, deciding I did not want to get too emotionally wrapped up in this death. So I painted, and it slowly breathed, and this went on for an hour or so. It was still alive by the time I finished the painting. I let it be and went home. The next day, it had died, and I had a memorial to a carpenter bee.   

These days I want to make paintings that feel light - almost silly or odd to paint. The paintings tell a simple story of what I encountered that day and, on a whim, decided I should paint. I throw down a cloth, find the acorns I collected a few days earlier on a walk, and set to work. Other times, I have to search around a little bit to find the subjects. I was cleaning out the pencil drawer and noticed the sweet little stubby pencils. I love little pencil nubs so much that I have a hard time throwing them out - so into the painting they went. Although it's nice when the subject moves me, what's more important to me is that I make the painting - a devotional painting, I call it.