Author: Joy Murray

I just wanted to post a brief health update after my post in January, Are We There Yet?

I got the results of my nerve conduction test (which was a very annoying and painful test.)  No good news on my lower body, but there was no significant damage in my upper body.  I will still have symptoms of weakness if I over do it, or get too tired.  My doctor thinks the tremor in my hands is a sign of fatigue, but not of anything more severe.  (I was quite afraid I was going to get Parkinson’s in addition to my HSP.)  But there’s  no real evidence of that.  Also, the tremors have gone down significantly since I moved back to Memphis.  We think it’s because I’m not working as much.  Although I loved my work there, I tended to push myself because I did love the work so much.  Now I get more time to rest — and I’m surrounded by good friends to help me when I can’t quite manage.

I need to have another MRI to see if there’s any bulges in my lumbar spine that they may be able to correct and slow the weakening in my legs.  And perhaps prevent future sciatic nerve problems.

So, all in all, the future looks like less of challenge than I’d feared.  Although I did over do it one day and the next day couldn’t stand up at all.  But if I’m careful, I should be able to stand and walk (with a walker) for short periods, and I have enough nerve integrity that I should always be able to transfer from chair to chair and get in and out of bed by myself.  Which I think is great news.

I can still be a nervy woman.

Watch out, ya’ll.

I recycle a lot of canvases.  I had a lot when I left Portland because I mentored children in art.  They would paint and paint, then give up and wouldn’t want to even look at the canvas — especially the older kids.  I painted over one with a dark phthalo blue and the paint puckered and cracked.  I wasn’t sure I could paint over it and have the paint stay on the canvas.  So I set it aside.  Then, in a bit of inspired thinking outside the canvas, I decided to slash it open.  I painted the back yellow then peeled it back and stapled it open.  It took a few months to decide what to put in the open space, but I think I came up with a good way to use it.

My camera isn’t taking good photos these days.  Also my hands aren’t as steady as they once were.  So I made a little film to show this one.  The lighting still isn’t great, but I think you’ll get an idea of what it looks like.

(I didn’t glue the smaller canvas to the larger one, I used a staple gun. Glue wouldn’t hold it.)

The Family Trees Exhibit will be here in Memphis, on Saturday March 3 from 4-8, at Crosstown Arts, 430 N Cleveland.  I hope you can stop by.

If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon:

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I’m having an art show with the artist Timothy Allen, who is also my son, on Saturday, March 3, at Crosstown Arts, 430 N Cleveland, from 4-8, called Family Trees.  We’ll both show our recent art and Mark Allen, Tim’s father, will play guitar.

I had hoped to have a lot of pieces done, but I’ve been sick off and on during the past few months, so I haven’t been able to work at the rate I’d like.  I don’t have as many paintings ready — and the space is quite large.  I’d hope to fill it up, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to.  I’ve changed my strategy to building a show that has space and pauses — a bit of breathing room between the pieces.

We are exploring the idea of family but also nature and narrative.  Tim’s works with intense color gradients and geometric shapes.  We both love trees.  I lean more to the narrative side of art.  We both use a bit of poetry — his in the titles and mine worked into the paintings.

I’d been working on a piece for the past week and the more I worked, the worse it got.  Then I got to see another artist’s work that was so good, it made me question why I’m even trying to paint at all.  I came home and tried to fix my piece and it was just a big mess.  I was tempted to throw it away.  Instead, I hid it under the bed.

The next day, I took out a new canvas and started on a piece with no particular goal in mind.  I’ve always loved the raku pottery figures of Lester Jones, and the expressions of peacefulness he achieves, so I tried to do a child with a certain look of serenity.

And then I got into a state of flow.  I worked on it all day and as I did, I got to meditate on the vulnerability of children, a theme that’s never far from my mind, since so many are preyed upon, often by a family member.  I meant to take more process pictures, but once I started painting I couldn’t stop.  I spent the whole day with this girl.  And as I finished up, so told me her poem, which I wrote in the grass she’s kneeling in.

I finished her up the next day, adding a bronze border and more line work on her hair.

I was so glad I put the other painting under the bed.  I know I’ll return to it, but each work has a pace of its own.  It can’t be forced.  But if I get out my own way, then the magic happens.

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If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

You can get prints and cards of my work on Redbubble:

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Over the past few weeks I’ve worked on a painting that actually started back in the 1990s.  I was making fabric sculptures and dolls then and was part of a show at the University of Memphis Gallery, along with other fabric artists.  They made a nice catalog so I still have a good picture of it.  I created a doll that honored the African American soldiers that had been maimed by war.

I made these strange dolls and sculptures until about 7 years ago, when I moved to an apartment that was too small to collect all the fabric, wire and materials I felt I needed to create them.   I did them by hand, and all that sewing with big needles through thick layers was taking its toll on my hands.  I then took up drawing and painting.  I also felt somewhat limited by what I could do with fabric in creating gestures, complexity, and backgrounds. But some of the ideas I had are still with me, and this soldier has stayed on my mind.

My son and I are having an art show in a very large space at Crosstown Arts, on March 3, 4-8 p.m. (430 N Cleveland).  The size of the walls has inspired us to work on larger surfaces, so I embarked on painting the largest canvas I’ve worked on so far, 24″ x 48″.

I was able to do more with the figure and build on the idea of transformation, integrating more of nature into it.  I wanted to illustrate the ideas of being rooted with the sadness of losing mobility.  I followed my instincts as I created the painted.

I thought a lot about the word lost pertaining to the loss of limbs.  In Soldier’s hair, I worked in the phrase “I didn’t lose them, they were stolen.”  War steals so much from us all.

When I started this, I expected Soldier’s expression to be angrier, but I couldn’t quite get him to scowl.  There is anger, yes, but more strength and more of a sense of the divine.

I’ve always thought that God is among us — not in the churches, necessarily, but in the people around us, those not posing as divine but who are illuminating the dark corners of everyday life

Thanks for reading my blog.

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If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon.  It costs as little as a dollar a month and makes you eligible for exclusive content and free give-aways of my art.

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

You can get prints and cards of some of my work on Redbubble:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/JoyMurray/shop?asc=u