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
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