May 29, 2007
Again a piece not expected. Not knowing how to move forward in my day emotionally, once again the clay screamed to me and I listened. This piece came extremely quickly, 20 to 30 minutes. I was intent on not overworking it. I was just given a Marc Chagall painting by someone that I love very dearly. Her name is Holly. (She is a teacher and a magnificent one. We should all hope that our children had her in her tutelage or regret that we didn't. But, please can someone convince her to pursue her writing? Honestly, she has volumes of stories to tell us, inform us, entertain us, and ultimately to change how we look at the world) Oh, did I digress? Back to the painting...it is a beautiful angel child descending from heaven. I of course was so moved by the magnitude of the gift itself, but so moved also by the familiarity of the piece. It reminds me so much of my work in its rawest moments…in the beginning when I have not tried to make everything anatomically correct…when it is the gesture of the torso or the feel of the eyes, though they may not be symmetrical. This Chagall has a hand that looks like a foot and two eyes that don’t match. In my readings of Chagall he was spontaneous and rapid in his creations. He painted often in pen and ink, a medium that is unforgiving in the permanence of a stroke. He gave over the need to make the piece representationally correct for the feel of it. And he simply kept making more pieces as many artists do, to let the work and his inner world come forward.
Clay is forgiving. One can change a stroke. But in changing a stroke one takes the chance of changing the whole emotion of the piece. I am struggling to attend to the emotion and feel of the piece and not try to make the piece realistically perfect.
It is such a beautiful challenge to attempt to stay present in the creation. What stroke of clay takes away from the piece and what oddly unrealistic turn makes it feel more real?
