DRYING OILS IN THE SUNLIGHT IN SKID ROW.
(SCROLL DOWN FOR DARLENE'S & PENNY'S WORK).
Penny and Darlene brought paintings outside,
not really to dry them, but to have them photographed.
Following fairly straightforward painterly responses to previous master's works,
Penny, like other members of the art project, will migrate into more overtly
transmutant works, in which the "original" becomes, more obviously,
a "diving board". See below.
VARIATIONS OF RESPONSES TO OLD MASTER STUDIES, PENNY KIRK (counter-clockwise from upper left) :
La Gioconda, oil on canvas,
Goya with Transmigrating Head. sanguine grisaille, oil on canvas,
Goya with Transmigrating Head, detail,
The Transfiguration, detail, charcoal on paper, chromatically manipulated digital inkjet print on matte paper.
Foreground, Penny's "Tobias and the Angel" sits in the doorway to the art project studio,
the steet life looms vital, midground, the everpresent city, behind.
Penny's own unique assault upon and response to "Old Masters' Studies"
brought her to Rembrandt's apocryphal work.
Darlene, for a time, submersed herself in working from Renoir paintings.
Sisters sitting at pianos, nudes in pools, bowls of flowers, and then,
...as one extravaganza of linseed oil and pigment upon stretched linen calls for another...
..."the Boating Party".
Renoir's floating world of Bohemians lounging over crystal glasses of liquors
yields itself to the direct unquestioning brush work of Darlene's hands.
Darlene, herself, does not, too often, dine upon boats. She buys her lunch
from the meal-truck because they extend her credit until her check comes.
The food truck announces its arrival with their horn playing a staccato
interpretation of "La Cucaracha".
Why do they play a song about a cockroach?
Is it that we have cockroaches on these streets as fauna instead of armadillos?
Outside the art project studio the sun boils the atmosphere like ether,
cars slide by excreting carbonic perfumes, and pigeons levitate
and then float down from the sagging telephone wires.
Ladies upon the street banter back and forth in the neo-poetics of Ebonics.
This also is a "floating world".
Although one cannot discount the severe hardship upon the lives of the inhabitants
of Skid Row, there is also a rich culture here, and, as ever-present as
the more famous acts of violence, are daily acts of compassion.
One day, at the door of the art project, Darlene, who was living on
General Relief, $221 a month, took the shoes off her feet and gave them
to a woman without shoes.
Such is not an uncommon thing in the rarefied atmospheres of this inner city.
Yet the Skid Row People, who are generally highly averse to being photographed,
unless they know and trust you, take overt pride in seeing these oil
paintings depict their daily reality, including its most difficult aspects.
They watch as we drag our wet oil paintings out into the sun to photograph
our art in what is now an almost daily ritual.
The Skid Row People ask if they can come and join us.
We say yes.
We are the Skid Row People.
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