The Portrait
From crispyneurons
This is our portrait and the story behind it:
In April of 2004, Heather and I went to Xara Dulzura for the first time. We had an amazing experience. An area in the middle of a sunny green field had been set aside there for painting and modeling for painting. Heather and I modeled. About five people painted portraits of us over the course of two hours. It was fantastic. A crowd of people began to form. Some of them even gave us water and sunscreen to protect us from the late morning sun.
Five portraits of us were painted. They were to be used in an art project known as "Life-Still-Nude-Painting" which was to be exhibited on the playa for the 2004 burn. All of them were wonderful and creative, but one stood out as exceptionally well done. Jen Evonne was the artist. We loved it, and she offered to let us have it, because it meant so much to us. It was the first and only artistic expression of our connection that existed, and we wanted to frame and mat it and display it in our new home, Diyafa. The art project coordinator, Lady Miss Stacy, agreed to relinquish the painting later, as long as they could use it for their project on the playa. And we were all happy with this solution.
Not much later, we encountered Lady Miss Stacy distraught and in tears. She told us all of the paintings had been stolen! It was shocking to all, because burners often assume that other burners are more ethical than the population at large. Some of our friends were even in denial, suggesting that they had simply been 'borrowed' or 'moved' to a different place, perhaps to protect them. But they never turned up.
We told Jen what had happened, and she agreed to paint a new, different painting of us. That was amazingly generous of her. We had paid nothing for the first one, and she offered it to us as a gift; now she was offering to do another one. It was incredibly cool and so much more than I expect of anyone.
So we traded email addresses, and thus began a very long back-and-forth process of setting up a time and place to do the new portrait. She lives in Los Angeles, and we in San Diego, so it was problematic. She had no transportation and we had little time. Eventually the months flew by, and since we were all going to be at the 2004 burn, we planned to do it there. I got the art supplies and brought them with me to the burn.
Unfortunately, we couldn't find her! She camped at the Artery near Center Camp, but when we went there, no one knew who she was. We went back again later and still no luck. Then we spoke with another person who knew her ex-boyfriend. She took us to him, and we met him, explained the situation, and left him a note for her. But she never connected with us. (To those who haven't been to a burn: this is typical. Plans made prior to the event often are swept away, and it's very hard to connect with people on purpose there... very easy to do by accident though.)
I contacted her after the event. We were planning several trips to LA in early October having to do with getting fun fur in the Fashion District and Heather's fibroid surgery. After a postoperative checkup, we met her in Topanga Canyon, where she lives in a kind of religious compound nestled in the woods. (In fact she lives in a room normally occupied by Kansas Carradine, daughter of David Carradine. She has interesting tastes in music.) It was there that we sat for her to do the second portrait, the one you see here.
It took much longer: perhaps five hours. She put an amazing amount of work into it. It is similar to the original but definitely not a copy. This one reversed the colors of the original, so that Heather is in deep blues and I appear in fiery reds and oranges. She chose to do our faces in this portrait, whereas in the prior she had focused on the shapes of our bodies. And the suggestion of connection and love is so apparent. Heather's hair has accents of my fire, and mine is touched with her deep ocean blues. Her form dominates the composition, but my arm sweeps around her body in an embrace. My eyes are for her, and she basks in it. It's a remarkable painting, and my little critique here does it no justice.
