Art & Parkinson’s
More artwork and writing on the theme of “Holding & Releasing”
Containment
I’ve been drawing a lot of containers lately. Some of the containers are fully enclosed objects, whereas some let in and out the light and the air. I seem to want to do both: Make drawings that have firm, solid boundaries AND ones that are fluid and permeable. Some of the drawings have this bouncing-off-the-walls energy generated from confinement – and others seem to breathe, to allow the energy to flow in and out of the container. It’s my own version of alchemy. It has me thinking about our Parkinson’s experience and how the container symbol is as good as any for our life.
Portrait Slideshow (Containing Multitudes)
One morning I picked up my phone and an unwanted app started playing a slideshow of portraits from the last year. The app showed a certain lack of discernment.
Some of the images were portraits posed in lovely settings, appropriate for a carefully curated slideshow. But this was definitely an unconventional presentation. Many of the images were selfies I had taken early in the morning or late at night to be used later on as references for drawings. They were raw and unflattering, containing expressions of anger, sadness, defiance, etc.
And included in the slideshow were the resulting drawings and semi-abstract painted portraits – anything with two eyes and a mouth.
After my initial laughter, I realized that, although this was not a slideshow I’d want to show anybody, it is one that actually summarized the year fairly well. The good and bad, the public and private me.
Morning Sketches
