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.
Vulnerable, Acrylic on Canvas, 16×20″
I couldn’t get both lines of her prayer/ meditation to show on my camera. This side reads: “She’ll forgive but she won’t forget.”
And this side reads: “She’ll forgive, but she wants it to stop.”
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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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.
My last name was Allen then.
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 started by painting it red, because I wanted a hot, vibrant color to peek through the brush strokes here and there.
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’m a table painter, rather than an easel painter, and this involved a lot of turning the painting at different anglesI got the basic shapes down and then built layers of color and defining detailsMy final background color was phthlo blue (green shade) mixed with white, sanded here and there.Soldier Lost his Legs and Grew Strong as a Tree, by Joy Murray (Sorry the photo isn’t as crisp as I’d like)
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.
When I go through an illness, I like to wait until it’s over or I’ve adjusted to it before I start to talk about it. For most of my life, since I was 16, I’ve had a neurological condition that defied diagnosis. It started with seizures, then I developed weakness in my lower limbs For a while it was possible Multiple Sclerosis, but I was diagnosed as “abnormal.” When I was 46, after a thin slice MRI of my spine, they found a lesion in my thoracic spine (as well as a fracture vertebrae,) and diagnosed me with Transverse Myelitis.
Journal cover from 2005
The good thing about that diagnosis was that while my nerve damage couldn’t be repaired, it wasn’t degenerative.
Only it was. Subtly at first. A lot of my decreasing my mobility was blamed on increasing osteo-arthritis in my lower limbs. I made a progression from cane, to walker, to sometimes wheelchair use.
Journal sketch 2013
Still, as I was considering leaving Portland, I had the feeling my upper body was getting weaker. I have become quite clumsy. I began to fall more often.
A few months ago, I had a pinched sciatic nerve that caused me some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. My new neurologist ordered a complete MRI of my brain and spine. The good news was my brain is fine. The bad news is my spinal cord is thinning and he believes I have a condition called “Heredetary Spastic Paraplegia.”
“Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) is a general term for an expanding group of rare genetic disorders characterized by slowly progressive weakness(paraplegia) and increased muscle tone and stiffness (spasticity) of leg muscles. The age of onset, rate of progression, associated symptoms, degree of muscle weakness and spasticity, and overall severity of HSP can vary greatly from one person to another, even among individuals with the same subtype or among individuals within the same family.”
It’s more rare than Transverse Myelitis. I don’t know of anyone in my family who has it. The neurologist said it could be caused by a genetic mutation as much as being passed down through the family.
I told a friend I thought I’d lost a part of my identity by the diagnosis change. She said she didn’t think it was so much a part of my identity, it’s just something I have. But I went so long without having a diagnosis, and there were many times when I thought I was some sort of hypochondriac. With a name for it, it was validated. And, of course, I took hope in the assurance that it was NOT a degenerative condition. I’m degenerate enough, thank you very much.
But over the years, there was always evidence that I was weakening. And there was always a little bit of guilt about not doing more physical therapy, perhaps I wouldn’t be getting so weak if I exercised more. It’s that modern faith in the exercise cure-all that I didn’t feel I was living up to. But even when I was doing water-aerobics and Tai Chi, I was weakening.
Illustration for the music video Never Going Back to the Gravity 2014
I rode a bike til I was in my 30s, then I couldn’t, my feet fell off the pedals. I lost bowel and bladder functions — talk about adding insult to injury. I tried diets, exercises and all kinds of “cures,” but the steady weakening was there. I could blame it on age, even though I knew people in their 70s, 80s and 90s who hadn’t weakened at nearly the rate I had. I think the diagnosis was my own little faith cure, my island, my way of minimizing the condition and getting on with my life.
So now, I’m processing this new diagnosis. Later this week, I go to have a “nerve conduction” test, to see how much the nerve damage has spread. The good news is I’m still sensory in tact, and in many ways hypersensitive. I still have a sensual life. And the sciatic nerve pain stopped. The neurologist gave me better medications for controlling spasticity and leg spasms. It also helps with mood swings and for the first time for decades, I don’t feel like my life is too hard, that death would be a good solution to all my problems. That’s a huge weight lifted off of me. I think I can make it through. I am a survivor.
As soon as the pain was under control, I started painting again.
But it hasn’t been the kind of manic, I better get this done before all hell breaks loose kind of energy, or the desire to take on bigger projects than I can manage. If anything, I’ve cut back on a lot of stuff.
I’m tired. And disappointed. And frustrated.
And it’s okay. I don’t have to find a silver lining to this situation, although I will, I know. That’s my nature. I don’t want to dwell forever in a place of mourning for the life I couldn’t have. And I’m lucky to have friends with varying degrees of disability who make my life easier and give me perspective.
Still, I will probably never get better. Chances are I will get worse.
But still, there’s a little wild Joy inside me that’s already doing an unaccompanied dance to the internal music that has gotten me through this far, and will take me where I need to go. I won’t limit myself to this sad aspect, I know.
But for now, I’m sitting with my impatience and sorrow.
And it’s okay. It’s all going to be what it is, regardless of what I think should happen. What a gift it is to age, to learn, to cry, to transform.
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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. January 15, I will be giving away this painting:
Bougainvillea in the Rain, mixed media on paper, 7×10″
I haven’t been blogging as much as usual for the past month or so. I’m going through some life changes, including a change of my diagnosis, which I’m still processing. I will writing more after the first of the year about that. I’m still undergoing tests, so I want to get that finished with before I write much about it
But I want to take the time to thank all my readers and supporters for the dialogue and kindness that you’ve shared with me this year. I usually post a picture of my pile of journals for the year at the end of the year. I moved from Portland back to my hometown of Memphis, and I haven’t totally recaptured my organization systems. Most of my journals are on shelves but they aren’t sorted by date yet. That’s one of those chores I just haven’t gotten around to yet.
I’ve created a lot of painting outside my journal and I feel good about that. I’m grateful for the patrons who bought my art, and for those who are supporting me through Patreon. You are the reason I can blog and stay connected to the world.
2017 was a year of changes. It’s been year of uncertainty, especially for those of us dependent on healthcare and the Affordable Care Act. Contention and outrage has bubbled up around us. Kindness hasn’t been featured much in the public discourse. But in my own life, I see it everywhere around me. And that’s the key to surviving through hard times — practicing kindness. To others and yourself.
Despair can hang like a veil over us and distort our vision. The only thing, though, we have some control over is our own lives. What we contribute to the world is what defines our world. I know it’s not that simple, but in many ways it is.
I hope in 2018, whatever challenges present themselves, we all hold on to our sweetness, our humanity. Love is always the most powerful force. If you don’t see that reflected in current event, you will see it in your heart, and in those you hold close.
Happy New Year!
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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. January 15, I will be giving away this painting:
Bougainvillea in the Rain, mixed media on paper, 7×10″
joy murray art~stories~life 