Reading Pictures

Today I'm going to let the pictures do the talking (well, the leading). I decided to choose the images first and then see what comes up . . .

This one is from a trip to Mexico I took with my friend Dale about four years ago. That year I was living in Montreal, had started a dog portrait painting business and was rapidly running out of money. I had not yet started working for my brother . . . Mexico was a luxury I could ill afford. But Dale has a way of putting things into perspective. Referring to my fledgling business, which I was funding through some savings, he advised: "put everything into it, Liz, so that even if you fail, at least you go out like a Roman candle." I still don't know what a Roman candle is, but it sounded exciting and self respecting. It sounded so good, in fact, I decided to apply that concept to my life as well. Live large, fail big. So, I went to Mexico. And amidst all the unspeakable beauty -- such as flowers so exquisitely shaped and saturated in colour that they hurt my eyes -- I photographed my feet. Then, just as I began to pay for food with fumes, my brother swooped in to offer me a marketing writing job for which I had little experience, and trained me up into the freelance marketing writer I am today.


It's been almost a year since my apartment in Montreal burned down and I still don't know where to live (although I'm currently living in Toronto), or what to do (although I'm currently freelance writing for my brother's marketing company), or who I am (Potential novelist? Potential journalist? Potential painter? Potential contributing human?) Maybe it's that I want to travel . . .


I think about my childhood in Manila every single day and the attendant ache often leaves me breathless. Is it really, really true that I can never get back to that time? I mean, obviously, my brain gets that, but my chest refuses to believe it. I am starting to think that perhaps I need to go back to Manila and write about it . . . maybe that's what will help complete the picture, which really does feel incomplete . . .


I have always loved this stage of painting because although the painting is not yet cooked, already it's something I can taste. I often want to stop here.


I cried for a day after I photographed this stage of Pink LizChuck. I still like it better than the "finished" painting . . .


Sure it looks professional and all, and I get to pose like Chuck Close did between two of his large paintings, but here's the rub: when a painting is done I am always faced with this painful situation: having to start again . . .



(Thank god there are moments like these -- making and serving my Chuck Close cake.)

In grad school, I had a professor ask me if I was a Chuck Close stalker. The small detail that Mr. Close lives in the centre of the universe, New York, while we were all living in what amounted to a suburb of a suburb surrounded by box stores and industrial farmland generously spewing chemical pesticides into the air all summer, not to mention we were located hundreds of miles from New York, seemed to escape him. A Phd is only good for some things, I guess. But, yes, I do love Chuck Close's 1968 self portrait, which, I explained to this prof, is not the same thing as loving Mr. Close himself.

But I don't love Chuck Close's 1968 self portrait as much as I love this boy . . .



He is one of my favourite people for one simple reason. No, two reasons. 1. He exists; I am grateful for him every time I see him, which is not often enough. And, 2. when I was collapsing the summer of my break up with my short-shelf-life life partner (SSLLP), this little boy was all of three, and yet he knew exactly what to do. He found me where I was sobbing beside the giant Buddha statue in his parent's garden and, like any good CEO, first assessed the situation before offering the right solution. "Why are you crying, Aunty Liz?" Believing as I do that honesty is the best policy, I said, "Because I have no boyfriend anymore." His answer was so sensible that even I, in my broken-down state, could see its rightness. "I'll be your boyfriend."

Only about fifteen more years until he's old enough and I'm not yet dead.

When I get frustrated, I tend to want to destroy that which frustrates me. As the Chuck Close adaptations were piling up in my studio, I began to detest the earlier iterations. They sucked. It was clear, they had to be destroyed. Since I had mentally consigned them to the dustbin, I was free to play with them first. The soundtrack for this activity includes grunts and screams and invectives worthy of John MacInroe.


But when the destruction was done, what I had was this serene white Chuck swaddled in snow . . . he seemed peaceful, which is how I felt at that moment. Dale owns White Chuck as well as another destroyed painting, Orange Chuck. They are among the few Chucks saved from my fire.


Painting over those Chucks freed me to do the thing I had wanted to do all that year. I had been walking around with this feeling that Chuck needed flowers on his face somehow. White Chuck and Orange Chuck gave me the courage to florify these Chuck twins. Sadly, Daisy Chucks no longer exist. The fire . . .


I used to have a strict No-Pet-Painting rule. People only. At that time in my painting "career", I was committed to capturing likeness to such a degree that the surfaces of my paintings were tight as drums. Yet my painting gods were Jenny Saville and Lucien Freud whose gestures are as thick as the fleshy bodies they represent. Their painting style involves paint so lusciously thick that my friend Kim and I decided to coin a new painting term: thyke. Kind of like Woody Allen's lerve.


When I painted Georgia, SSLLP's dog, I finally let go. It was the loosest, fastest, thickest painting I'd ever done, and it brought me immense joy. I was thrilled with how easily it was coming to me, and how happy it would make SSLLP that Xmas (our last, as it turned out). Still, it took another three years, two of which were spent at grad school, to convince me that pet portrait painting might bring out the best in me, maybe even be one of the things that transforms me into a contributing human.

This be my new site. Would love to hear what you think: http://web.me.com/lizzypea/LizPhillipsPetPortraits/Home.html