Parallel Reality #1 Clarence

So Much Pain Makes my Heart Hurt

Clarence selected a fat bristle brush that he quickly dipped in yellow acrylic paint. He held the brush loosely, letting it meander on the blank paper. As his wrist rotated, the gobs of yellow paint started forming an oval. With a slow and dramatic gesture, Clarence lifted the brush off the paper, and lowered it once more onto the paint palette. He missed the yellow, landing halfway into the green. Unfazed, Clarence added to the oval, watching the colors mix.

I laid out more paint and brushes for another man, who stared at me fixedly from the other end of the table. Other people walked in and sat down. Some said hello, others, like the man who stared at me, could only behold his surroundings and try to latch on to the familiar.

Clarence could be quite talkative, usually in a mix of simple language and grandiosity, but today he was pensive. The painting he'd made the previous day was a realistic self-portrait as a religious figure, a much more controlled composition. Today's painting was spontaneous and abstract. Clarence put his brush down and sat back in his chair.

It was a relatively crude painting, certainly one that could have benefited from more work, but the way he said, "I'm done" sounded convincing and final. I suggested thinking of a title for it.

A few minutes went by and Clarence held his picture up to me. He'd penciled in a title in the right hand corner: So Much Pain makes my Heart Hurt. He'd also signed the painting in big black capital letters across the bottom (electronically deleted from Figure). Everyone else in the group worked on their own, so I sat next to Clarence.

"It's a powerful picture. Especially now that you gave it that title, I look at it differently," I said. "Those black lines are like nails going in, I can almost feel the pain."

I felt like I had already said too much, but Clarence was looking at me with this "keep talking" look. So I thought of something related to his image (Figure 1), but not so close to it. "You know, there is a poet named Billy Collins who says that a title is like an ant that can lift a thousand times its own weight."

"Yeah," Clarence answered. "I don't know what that means but it sounds right."

"I think you do know, 'cause your title made me look at the image a certain way," I said. " How do you feel now that you are looking at this picture?"

"I feel the same," Clarence said, searching for the rest of his answer. "But I expressed how I feel. Yeah, I can paint it or I can tell it in words. When I say my heart hurts in words, some people be sayin' I'm soft, but when I tell it in a picture, they don't say that, 'cause they know how it feels in their heart."

"I'm so glad you said that, because you just explained what is good about art making," I said. "I'll remember it, and with your permission, I'd like to share your images and your words with some of my colleagues, without using your real name of course because this is your private life."

"Sure, you can show them," Clarence said. "You can even use my name too, I don't mind."

Martin Perdoux, MAAT, ATR

Replies:

Re: Parallel Reality #1 Clarence, by Martin Perdoux, 4/25/00 Re: Parallel Reality#1 Clarence, by MR, 07/17/00 Re: Parallel Reality#1 Clarence, by Martin Perdoux, 07/17/00

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