The concrete shell

"Or calling your room on a concrete shell

Fighting all alone, with yourself, with yourself
And you just wanna feel like a coin that's been tossed
In a wishing well, a wishing well
A wishing well, a wishing well
Well you're tossed in the air
And you fell and you fell
Through the dark blue waters
Where you cast your spell
Like you were just a wish that could turn out well

So you stand on the corner
Where the angels sit
And you think to yourself,
"This is it, this is it
This is all that I have
All I can stand
Is this air in my lungs
And this coin in my hand"
That you tossed in the air
And I fell, and I fell
All the way to the bottom
Of the well, of the well
Like those soft little secrets
That you tell, that you tell
To yourself, when you think
No one's listening to, well"

From the song "Wishing Well", by The Airborne Toxic Event

"Far, far away from home

I have no one to watch the morning with

and to give me a shot in time

before my heart rots away

No one to warm up these cold bones, baby

.....

This winter was bad

and I think I forgot my shadow in some subway car"

From the song "Eiti Leda", by Seru Giran

This very, very sad, strange and beautiful song was sort of the inspiration for this piece. I wish I could have translated it all, but it's really long. Anyway, it's one of my favorites.

I usually don't paint a lot of faces, because I greatly struggle with them, but this time, I decided to take up some courage and go for it. It's not quiet what I expected, but I like it anyways...that's what matters the most, right?. I purposely used a very highly textured surface, mostly because it doesn't allow me to get hung up on every tiny little detail, and also because it's s much fun!. The colors were improvised, I wanted to see how crazy I could get with them, sort of as a contrast with her expression which is lonely,almost sad.

Into the Sea

"You leave, Alfonsina
with your solitude
what new poems
did you go looking for?
An ancient voice
made of wind and salt
shatters your soul
it is taking her away
and you are going over there
as if in a dream
asleep, Alfonsina
dressed as the sea"

From a song by Mercedes Sosa, Alphonsine and the Sea (Alfonsina y el mar)

This piece started as a monoprint which I later planned to stamp and play around with. But the more I looked at it, the more it resembled an ocean and it got me thinking about this particular song. It's a very old song , beautiful and sad, it's about a woman who loses herself in the ocean and nobody knows why. That's why I decided to add the woman's torso walking into this particular sea...nostalgic, sad, mystical, unknown. She walks into the uncharted waters for reasons no one understands, only her heart knows why.