elisedodeles_bip4ms

Riffing on Reality

While speaking with my mother I noticed she often brings the past into the present with the past being as real to her as the present moment. Her memory issues started me thinking about how different realities are represented in paintings. With the painting I am working on now I am bringing in various images to underpin the idea that many realities may be described in one painting. Since I utilize artworks by other artists to inspire my own, I have used a watercolor landscape for my first layer of reality. This is the dream layer because it is less clearly defined than the ‘realistic’ layer to come next. As in a dream, it is in some places just an outline, barely recognizable. Thus far I am pleased with the result: a dream like reality achieved with thinly applied layers of paint.

Is This Hell? In process, the dream layer, 30 x 24 inches, oil on canvas

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Where I Am Now

Today was the first day I felt I could work in my studio in many weeks. I began this 16 x 20 inch oil sketch. It is a preliminary study for a larger 30 x 40 inch painting I will be making. The figure in the background and the snake in the foreground are taken from a drawing in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum. The dog is Sammie, of course, while the figures are models on the Croquis Cafe website. The composition’s subject is how I see things now. That is rather like hell. However, the presence of Sammie, whom I only added towards the end of the workday seems to indicate I am feeling less hopeless. A good sign.

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Hysteria

I painted some of the patients from a hospital in France when I was working in the Rare Books and Special Collections Department at Princeton University. So this may have been painted between 2012-2014. The texture is like barbed wire. It is a 30 x 40 inch oil painting on canvas.

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Retrospective

Here are some images that did not make it into the 40-year Retrospective book I will be sending out to curators. They are drawings from the 1980s and 1990s. The middle image is taken from Lesbian Art in America by Harmony Hammond. The first drawing was done when I was a student, and the last one is a drawing of my friend Donna.

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Portrait of Sandra Bernhard

Back in the day, many of us looked up to Sandra Bernhard, and were intrigued and tantalized by her relationship with Madonna. For some reason I remember her line from a live show, “Look ladies, no cellulite”. Maybe I am thinking about that now because of being in Palm Springs. The original painting is in someone’s personal collection.

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