painting

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Taking serious liberties with the details of the Long Island Serial Killer case. Of the eleven bodies found on Gilgo Beach, one was actually male (dressed as a woman and a sex worker like the rest of the victims), but aesthetically I’d rather fill the page with curvaceous 60s babes.

I’ve been reading boatloads of case descriptions for some of the grisliest unsolved murders around (the theme for this series is unsolved deaths and disappearances where the case is bizarre enough to appear “paranormal” in nature–freak occurrences, elements of ritualistic sacrifice, alien abduction), but the important thing for me is that the story is not overwhelmed by the details of the killing itself. I can’t do anything involving children because it’s too much of an immediate shocker. Most serial killers are out of the running as well, because the story is always about the killer, and not the case itself.

The Long Island serial killer is an exception to this rule because a.) they have yet to be caught, and b.) Shannan Gilbert. When Shannan Gilbert went missing, the search to find her led to the discover of ten other remains on or near Gilgo Beach. Gilbert’s connection to the serial killings is interesting because there isn’t one–the fact that she went missing near to the site of a serial killer’s dumping ground is just a strange coincidence.

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Arethusa

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From Ovid’s Metamophoses, the transformation of the nymph Arethusa into a river.
“The God so near, a chilly sweat possest
My fainting limbs, at ev’ry pore exprest;
My strength distill’d in drops, my hair in dew,
My form was chang’d, and all my substance new.
Each motion was a stream, and my whole frame
Turn’d to a fount, which still preserves my name.” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 5.710)

But I think Wikipedia says it better:
“She began to perspire profusely from fear, and soon transformed into a stream.”

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I received this in an email from my mom a few weeks ago: "Dad feels like a failed auctioneer, but is now hooked on wearing tuxedos. It led to him having the best dream last night, he said Piccolo [the family’s precious cat, who eats at the table and is in charge of when doors are opened] was walking around on his hind legs wearing a little black suit and top hat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I want him to do that!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe you can make a little drawing for father’s day of that, he would be so happy. He and that cat are one.“

Happy Father’s Day!

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Postpartum Depression

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A class assignment, on the subject of “Postpartum Depression.” For many quick-turn-around projects when I need my paint to dry, I sketch and paint on sealed tissue paper, which had the added benefit that I could cut the portrait in half and flip one side “face” down.

Oil on tissue paper.

Love in the Arctic.

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Text reads:

He was a cartographer, and part of a team that mapped the Arctic. He doesn’t say when. He stops to clean his glasses and cross his legs. There were no real landmarks, so they measured the distances between rocks. They were there for a very long time. He doesn’t remember just how long. And it was cold.

He does remember just how cold.

He stepped outside for a cigarette and the ember froze, just like that, still burning inside and red and glowing. And the ice and the cold find their way inside you, inside your body and your mind and not just your coat and gloves. In the Arctic, the wind can drag away your mind if you aren’t careful. So the team spent all their time remembering, and keeping their memories safe or else they’d wake up empty.

Between rocks, he was home, he was in his mother’s arms and he was a child. The isolation had been bearable, but with his mother’s smile on his mind, he felt wolves crawling out of his skin. They were all of them lost in the Ganzfeld—blinded by immeasurable white, sharing ghosts in the corners of their eyes. The loneliness, the loneliness, the cold and bitter fingers snatching at his thoughts and stealing them until nothing new existed but the hallucinations and all he had to stay sane was the contemplation of a dead woman.

And then; she.

Joined their team by dogsled when the cook finally lost the last of his mind to the frozen north. She, with a smile he could remember from infinite angles. Chapped by the cold, which only gave more variety to the planes of her lips. And they made new memories, and sheltered one another from the worst of the cold. And when the white overwhelmed, they looked into one another’s eyes for color to break the field. Her eyes were green, a soothing shade. He doesn’t have the catalogue of knowledge to describe them succinctly. But they were green and that color appears in spots in the corners of his vision to this very day.

They measured and recorded all the miles between stones on the icy plains, the angles between them and their distance from the sky. But after all these years, he can only remember the curves of her mouth and the space between her eyes, the lengths of each of her fingers, the rise and fall of her chest with every slow breath.