Bone Gardens – sansoxygen.informaton.org

I’ve continued to use the practice of painting as a healing balm, which has been especially helpful in these August weeks so close to the year mark of Vernon’s death ( the date is tomorrow, in fact!) You may not be able to know without being told that all of the following paintings are based on bones—at least that is where they started. I had this idea of going back to some of Vernon’s original fractures by looking at images of x-rays, then abstracting them in order to create something new. Of course, with this kind of painting in particular, the artist has very little say in where the painting will go, how it will emerge, or if she’ll even like the thing when it’s finished. There are often a lot of layers and a lot of covering up, a lot of frustration—but also, a lot of freedom and joy. Ultimately, I hoped to make something beautiful out of something broken and painful. And if not always beautiful, at least colorful.

Why bones? It was the starting place for us after Vernon’s accident—the parts that were supposed to heal most quickly. But even though they healed, they never held him up again. But bones…what are they? They are the scaffolds of our bodies on which the rest rests. Hidden from view all our lives, these are the parts of our earthly bodies that remain the longest when the rest has passed away. Bone marrow produces the blood and stem cells that keep us alive…and can help give life to others! All this thinking about our bones made me wonder: can they hold our memories too, can they hold our trauma? It sure feels like it sometimes, even if it’s merely poetic, rather than scientific association. People talk about feeling things deep in their bones, so I know I’m not alone. This series for me has been about exploring some of these things and releasing some of this pain and turning it into something else. I couldn’t fix Vernon’s broken body, but I can attempt to take this kind of healing work into my own hands, with the brush as my scalpel.

I’m leaving the working titles off as I share them because I don’t want to influence the viewing. All are oil paint.

20×24″

14×18″

30X36″

20×24″

30×36″, oil

24×36″

30×36″

in closing here is a poem for thought by the always wonderful Mary Oliver, called Bone.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out

what the soul is,

and where hidden,

and what shape

and so, last week,

when I found on the beach

the ear bone

of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought

maybe I was close

to discovering something

for the ear bone

is the portion that lasts longest

in any of us, man or whale; shaped

like a squat spoon

with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer’s head,

it joined its two sisters

in the house of hearing,

it was only

two inches long

and thought: the soul

might be like this

so hard, so necessary

yet almost nothing.

Beside me

the gray sea

was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over

its time-ridiculing roar;

I looked but I couldn’t see anything

through its dark-knit glare;

yet don’t we all know, the golden sand

is there at the bottom,

though our eyes have never seen it,

nor can our hands ever catch it

lest we would sift it down

into fractions, and facts

certainties

and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.