ozzie harriet and robert

Seeing just boggles me. This is is a painting of mine, from oh, six years ago or so ago. It's large, oil on canvas, and it hangs on my wall because I simply continue to enjoy looking at it everyday. I painted it after a trip to Lo Angeles with my sister, Dianne, to see my namesake niece, Charlotte.

My souvenir from the visit was this postcard of Ozzie & Harriet, a reminder of the idealized 1950's family on TV from my childhood. I brought the postcard home, and projected it onto my canvas late one night. The image of this perfect family humored me, as my own was splintered and not perfect at all. In my pile of old black and white photographs, collected from flea markets and garage sales, was this other charming gentleman, with an elegant smile and a great hat. He looked like Robert Johnson, the bluesman, too, whose music inspires me when I paint. So Robert got projected up there, in the dark, all life size, and became a member of the family. I mark the outlines of the figures in cobalt blue paint on the white canvas, the way Alice Neel used to do. Later I choose all the colors and draw from the handheld picture. Color is how I feel about it all, and painting it heals me some way - the bright colors in this painting feel triumphant I think. It made me smile to think of the mysterious black brother in the Ozzie and Harriet scenario.

Sort of like how it feels now, to have Obama as President of the United States, in fact. I look at this painting and still smile at the trickster imposing as child. Now this is what is so cool about being an artist. Yesterday, I am reading my old journals, which I never do, and I stumbled upon an entry from 2004. Oh, I really would like to paint myself as a black member of the family, but how in the world could I do that? I do not understand even a shadow of the how it feels to have black skin in the South, to be suspected of shoplifting or speeding or to be turned down for a job because of the color of my skin. I decided not to paint that idea. But then, yesterday, I saw. This is that painting! I had painted it already. I am the Robert, this is yet another self portrait, and yes, it reveals to me how I FELT in my own family. Odd as he looks here, there is a happiness, a charm, a knowing, though, isn't there? Another glimpse into the light of things. Amazing.

Little Boat Without An Oar

What I'm trying to do is say lighten up and let life flow through you, and be on the waves as they go up and down. For me, a great image in mythology is Tristan of Tristan and Isolde. He's out there on a little boat without an oar, without a rudder, on the Irish sea . . . You float your way. You drift. The essence of my approach is to be extravagantly accepting and forgiving of yourself and others. Ride the waves and let life take you where it has good things for you." - Thomas Moore

Lately I am watching several close family members, the generation below me, struggling with how to do the real thing in their marriages: how to juggle those elusive components that create genuine intimacy. I am blessed now, in my fifties, to have a good and soulful relationship, but this arrived only after I found that floating, trusting place in myself. It is not that I did not enjoy the ride and the practice; I served as muse and inspired poetry and song, because I was good at the lush part of love and skilled at seduction. But I wanted the real thing. I wanted to find home with my mate and my children, to have the family that reflected deep trust and respect, faithfulness...lightness of being. When I was young I thought if I worked hard enough anything was possible. If I worked hard enough... if I kept a perfectly clean house... if I cooked dinner every night, was a goddess in bed, if I was perfect at every task I took on. But I had no instinctive roadmap for success; my parents divorced when I was little and carried great animosity toward one another. I simply had no earthly idea how to get what I wanted. I had desire, my faith and my determination and I expected that to work. It didn't. It wasn't what I expected. Which is exactly the point. And what a life of faith really is. Faith to leap into new places of trust. No, the answer, too long coming, and one completely beyond logic, was to let go. It was to float around in that little boat without an oar.