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First order of business, I'd like to announce that I am finished with painting number 18 and halfway finished with painting number 19. The reason why its taken so long to post a new painting is because I became incredibly bored with the gargantuan painting I started a week ago. Also, I was frustrated with my schizophrenic computer that has done everything but spin around on the table and projectile vomit at me since it caught a virus. I just needed to work on something that I could be more expressive with, something that I wouldn't have to reference a photo every 2 seconds for.
And I ended up with a painting of a lot of ass and not much else. I've hesitated a lot about whether to post a picture of this painting on the blog tonight for several reasons. First, the photo quality is totally horrible, causing hideous glare on some parts of the painting, and leaving other important parts completely in shadow. While my photoshop skills are usually enough to fix something like this, I don't have photoshop anymore. Secondly; after finishing this painting, I'm left in a total bafflement about why I painted it. Before I say more about that, here she is.
Don't get me wrong. I love the female figure as much as any god fearing artist, but I just realized that she doesn't have any arms. In my defense, I'm doing this painting from a photograph, and was drawn to it because of the strange intimacy of the figure and the muted ambiguous swathes of color. I think it's strange and a little disturbing that I failed to notice her lack of appendages until now. To ease my mind that I'm not harboring some deep seated psychological issues, I did a little research on a possible meaning behind the armless apparition.
Naturally, I looked to Freud first. After being enraptured for about 10 minutes reading about Amputee Identity Disorder (when for no good reason a person decides that they really *don't* want their legs, and elect for it to get hacked off) I realized that Freud's explanation was a cop-out. He basically asserts that when someone feels this way it is because they want to experience a group identity by joining the ranks of the disabled. Hogwash. So then I looked it up on some new age sight and am equally skeptical about this definition:
"To dream that your arm has been injured, signifies your inability to care for yourself or your helplessness in reaching out to others. You may have been feeling limited and restricted in terms of your freedom or activities. The right arm signifies your outgoing nature and is associated with masculine energy, while your left arm signifies your supportive or nurturing nature and is associated with feminine qualities. Losing either arm may suggest that you are failing to recognize its respective characteristics."
Just reading that makes me want to light some nag champa incense and opt for patchouli oil over taking regular showers. In all fairness, the woman is likely raising her arms above her head is a leisurely, sensual morning stretch. I like to believe that I've captured the haziness one feels when waking too early with this painting. Bleeding colors, ambiguous subject matter, overwhelmingly bright lights.
Second order of business...if you are mystified by the title of this blog, you should listen to more PJ Harvey. Although, for my own purposes, the lyrics would be more relevant if they instead said "Lick my legs, they're on fire." They are (and please do). I tucked another tortured 20 miles under my belt today. I know that I'm mildly retarded for continuing to believe that somehow I'll find a way to get to China to run with all the other psychotics in the Great Wall Marathon, but like my guru Rocky Balboa says, "You gotta be a moron... you gotta be a moron to wanna be a fighter." While I am aware that there is no boxing in marathon, I do listen to "Eye of the Tiger" when I run.
I've decided that if I can't run in China, I'll do the OC Marathon on May 2. I think I'm ready to run it already.
I'll post more pictures tomorrow of the painting so you can see what it *really* looks like.
