TWO SISTERS

While doing Qigong this morning, I noticed I was facing this painting, a diptych that I sold many years ago but inherited back somewhat recently when the owner transitioned, and I realized I wanted to tell you the story of it. This piece is one of my favorites.

I was living in Williamsburg, NY in 1994/95 and my building super, also an artist, would alert me to any thrown out canvases, as I have painted over a few "ghost canvases" I call them. These two masonite boards were both painted-- one green, one purple-- and the artist had started on these bottles and then I guess got bored with them and threw them away. When I saw them, I knew that I wanted to execute an idea I had about two sisters, for which my sister and I had already modeled for this future painting I had in mind. I realized I wanted the piece to be multimedia, because I was telling a short story of slavery and colonialism, by using the photo from a magazine of two sisters in African dress in the upper left and two sisters in the lower right enduring the aftermath of a crisis. The painted sisters are in white lace with straightened hair. All of these years later, 26 in fact, there has been no wear and tear on the painting; the pasted on photos are still perfectly enmeshed with the boards and the paint I used as an overwash. The ghosts of the original bottles are eerie to me and effective to the diptych's story. I have used newspaper too as pasted on images on a few paintings that are all sold. I have one other "ghost" canvas here that is a self-portrait with my dragon, that has a lot of meaning to me.

Happy Summer to everyone!! And hopefully you received your card by the time you see this post. (I am trying tags for the first time since the platform keeps encouraging it like a nuisance, but it probably makes no sense anyway since this is entirely private and between me and you.)

LOVE!