marlene mountain
painting series 4
'a working mother's painting series'
exhibition statement
1980

 

 

painting series four
working mother's painting series
september-october 1980 (30 paintings, 18 x 24"; a painting a day for a month, ranging from 2 minutes to an hour)
note: date, title, time of day, duration in minutes of painting

 

I didn't moon-view during the month of these paintings; I didn't have time. It was only by accident that I saw her at all

The paintings were more inside-moon paintings. How I lived. The difference in a Sunday and a Monday. Having to leave the mountain in order to work in order to return to the mountain. Loving the mountain; loving in the mountain.

They were also an experiment - a dare - in energy.

I was scared before I started the series; I wasn't sure I was ready to commit myself. I wasn't sure what the paintings would be about: only that the mountain and the moon - already symbols in my work - would be the shapes, and that I would somehow record what was happening each day, beginning on the next new moon.

The weekend before I still didn't know - there were all those panels to prepare, there was 'so much' to decide (should I make diary notes on the paintings?) and to worry about (would I end up with 29 bad paintings?) - and, then, I was so be half way across the state on the day I was to begin. I asked friends: Wait a month? Stay home and paint? Go off and not paint? Go off and start a series?

Finally, a friend said, Marlene, why don't you just shut up and paint. I started the series crosslegged on the floor of a Nashville motel; away from the mountain, I painted her, and was committed.

Marlene M. Wills [Mountain]
January 28, 1981

 

 

showings:
Annual Area Artist Exhibit, Appalachian State University,
Boone, North Carolina, February 1981

808 Gallery, Johnson City, Tennessee, August 8, 1981 8 pm
a two-year celebration
Special thanks to Wanda Harris and her belief in what women have to say,
and to The Road Company
also on view:
Orange Language Paintings, September-October 1980
Red and White and Pink, February-March 1981
mountain/moon etc wood collages, July 1981
haiku on panels


 



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ps 4 '808 Gallery'
ps 4 date, title, time of day, duration in minutes of painting
ps 4 exhibition statement

ps 4 'a working mother's painting series'


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