merged head mentoring

This is a big painting in progress as part of the Butcher's Daughter installation concept. The size is approximately 4 feet by 10 feet. I have ideas about stitching the story onto the canvas somehow and something is coming into mind like large woolly dolls. Dolls marked with the sins of my anceestors. or race. or???? It keeps getting darker and feels a bit dangerous.

vJane responds:

hi Rika,
Have you seen my nightmare painting? In it my face is merged with the head of a black swan. i just thought you might be interested in hearing of another parallel in our ways of being.
I love the wooly doll idea. wooly dolls with wooly forelocks like a little calf? wooly calf people??
Would they be gaming pieces on a sins of the ancestors board game?? or are you headed somewhere less literal.
Would they be animated in a video and be a more passive element in the installation?
How will the installation use people/viewers/participants?

AGAINwhoamiNOW

whereamiNOW

twisted through time

howMUCH

orTHIS

SOMETIMESitsLIKEthis

flipped

insideOUT

inHEREsomwhere

beeHand

the bee was dead. squashed in the palm of hand.
the air was full of bees.
close with bees.
warm too warm

who?AMiNOW?

coldBIRTH

coldbirthidentitytheftfemininevengeanceragerepressed

identity search

over generation

theFEAR

dream or nightmare

wheredidshego

godmother

test garden

worshipwarship

tornfaith

home

entrapment

seed of my mother and father

homeland

where the sky
presses down
and lifts off

kakabeka
neebing
rr2

darkness and light
all around
at once

bluegreen
tundra skyline

wild berries
strawberries
raspberries
blueberries
gooseberries
pincherries

saskatoons and
warm sand

scars

threads of life

still born into a dream

still born

a butcher’s daughter.
marked by death,

marked by millions
of deaths
as though she were there.

But I was not born yet.

She says

And I was not born there.

there in the forbidding
in the darkness
in the land of brothers grimm
and black forests.

she was born
where the sky presses down
and lifts off.
POW WOW
WOW POW

Where the sacrifice of peoples
original aboriginal peoples
has been covered up
and barely told.

still born into a land of sacrifice.
into a guilty skin of blue eyes

sacrifice

seed

outsider

deep freeze

a frozen psyche
conceived
in the deep
freeze
of a cold room

a womb room
full up with fear

wide awake

frost bite
slowly thaws
prickling painfully
burning stinging
wide awake
and frozen

frostbite

butterfly

lastinline

born again

A girl was born.
Again.
Last.
She was born into cold.
Of fear. Into darkness.
From death. From sacrifice
Of many.
Animal sacrifice.
Human sacrifice.
Blood. Loss. Longing.
She was born.

marked by death

in death and dying
up and down
dying
down
to death

death drags us
out of the body
then
up

out

towards light