Blue, Untitled & The Penn Review

© SSD

I am often asked three specific questions about my painting above: 1.) Why is it only blue? 2.) Why is it untitled? 3.) What and where is The Penn Review. Let me give a little back history about this painting followed by a more thorough explanation as a response to all three.

Over Winter Break in 2019/2020, I was house and cat sitting at my friend Brook's home in Dillingham, Alaska, where we both worked as lower elementary teachers. She was vacationing with her family in Hawaii. Brook is a wonderful artist herself and so staying at her place meant I had access to art supplies and an art table to work with them on. It was such a creative time. Before I painted the above work, I sat at her table and wrote the poem, Yellow Moth, which was later published by The Liminal Voice in Tokyo, Japan.  It's a poem about the tundra and what I know to be true; the tundra heals.

A day later, I watercolor painted the figures standing side by side. It is uncommon that I paint with just one color.  I didn't sit down thinking, "Today I am only going to paint with blue." It just flowed. I followed that flow and soon was pulling one figure to the foreground and then another. Painting the garments reminded me of designing clothing. I make much of my own and this other art form spilled into the angles of theirs. For a brief moment, I felt in dialog with each of them. This "conversation" guided me and my paintbrush.

Blue is a rare color in nature. Yet here, in Alaska, it is the color of our state flower, Forget-Me-Not (see image below).

 

There is an emotional element embedded in the name of these flowers that resonates within my painting; not wanting to be forgotten or what we carry forward so it is not.  If you look very closely at the first figure in my painting standing to the left of center, you will see that there are two others that they are carrying on their back. There is a capped child in a backpack looking to the left. Below that child is the face of an elder that blends into the fabric of the figure's shirt, just as they blend into the fabric of their life. You can see their eyes, part of their nose and mouth. The wisdom of the past is being carried from one generation to the next. This is what is not to be forgotten.  The child is also never to be forgotten. What I find endearing about this figure is their casual positioning, as well as the figure next to it and the child. I also find it very powerful and evocative.

 © SSD

The blue wave of being. Subsistence families define so much of their lives around, within and near water. They find comfort in a wave or ripple of water washing into their cupped hands. This painting depicts figures that I see as physical beings, but they are also bodies of water like the bodies of water they depend their survival on.

In small Alaska villages, subsistence families wait, watch and are always ready to go.  If you aren't on the water or going about your day on land, you are waiting; waiting for someone visiting to arrive, waiting for the plane you are booked on to land, waiting to see if the materials you need to patch one part of one thing or to inflate another has been delivered and waiting for your crew to join you at the dock. Watching is constant. Watching for a flock of ptarmigan to land in a nearby field or for a heard of grazing caribou, or as they are called in the Arctic, tutu. Watching for the first run of salmon or the weather, always. They are perpetually ready to go when a call comes alerting them to good or bad news, to a friend's boat who needs an extra hand, to offered fish for dinner or to Anchorage for medical care. The figures in my painting are engaged in these acts, too. The viewer decides which.

Why did I chose to leave this painting untitled? My simplest answer is because it tells so many stories. Viewers have told me what they see and the stories they hear, recall, write. Each was different. Each told stories that had nothing to do with my personal history or what I myself saw in this work of mine. I chose to leave it untitled, or sans titre, for exactly what Ruth Bernard Yeazell wrote in The New Republic Magazine (12/11/15):

"Untitled means that the artist who has produced this work has chosen not to name it and implicitly prefers that the painting speak for itself."

She also wrote, "Untitled, too, is a kind of title." Exactly.

What and where is The Penn Review? The Penn Review is the literary journal of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I have been to Philadelphia several times and truly favor going to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The University of Pennsylvania is not far from the museum. I have driven past it more than once.

After finishing the painting above and sitting near a snow streaked window in Southwest, Alaska, I searched Submittable's website looking for journals seeking art submissions. I happily spied that The Penn Review was. They accept only 4 percent of their submissions. That might be discouraging to some, but my thought was simply, "Submit your work." Alaskan artist are often told that their work is "Alaskan" and best published within the state. I don't follow that line of thinking. Art has no boundaries. Work submitted has two possible responses from any journal or magazine: yes, no.  

The Penn Review said yes. They accepted my untitled artwork in the summer of 2019. It was published in their No. 73 Volume, Spring 2022. The publication was delayed due to the pandemic. I was seriously happy when I got the news. Now more stories are being spoken, remembered and written about it by many others. ©

 

 © SSD

 https://www.pennreview.org/untitled-73