Being What I Am Becoming

“We must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing.”  –  Helene Cixous

“The Dancing Muse” 16″ x 12″ oil/canvas

I am working on new groups of paintings.  The first group of paintings is entitled  “Leaving Plato’s Cave”.  They are inspired by early Greek statues of women held in the antiquities section of the Louvre.  I am mesmerized by these statues of early goddesses and muses.  Since my last post I have been re-discovering, claiming and appropriating the language, thought and experience of French philosopher and humanist, Luce Irigaray.

Reading her latest book;  Through Vegetal Being (2016 Columbia University Press) led me to re-enter the world of this incredible woman philosopher, psychoanalyst and director of research in philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris.   What I am discovering and re-constituting for myself as an artist is a distinct poetics of  thinking, speaking and writing about my work that honors the distinct differance of a feminine artist.    Joining Irigaray in my explorations are two other great philosophers of the times; Helene Cixous and Julia Kristeva.  These three women, often credited with the jouissance of French Feminism/Humanism are provoking oceanic shifts in my thinking about my work as an artist.

I continue with my French studies at that Denver Alliance Francaise.  In preparation for my artist residency in France this fall and upcoming exhibit “Alchemy on the Seine – River, Woods, & Word” I will be working with French scholar, Emmanuelle Pourray, on the translation of Jane Hirshfield’s poem; On The Fifth Day, works by Wendell Berry, and selections from The Ecopoetry Anthology.