“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Portrait by Death, with Visual Aid

Prudence Whittlesey©2011

By Prudence Whittlesey actually, but the effect was one of having just died. This is the first bardo, the ground luminosity. The other point being that paint is seen in the act of liberating itself from hands and brushes. It was an astonishing dance that Prudence did, with her left hand not touching the paper, but holding brushes anyway, like a counterweight, the dark left hand to balance out the forces of rectitude. While she held me with her glittering eye, as they say. “Stay” was her one command as she danced around the room, a dance of death, happy death, intent on its prey, or its love, with brushes.

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