Susan’s Stuff: The story of “Avery, Yar”

By Susan C. Price

Consider before you read this.
    Do you want to change your impression of what you were originally drawn to in a painting? If someone says, “I see a dog in this painting,” it can be very hard to un-see the dog.
    Ok, then.

“Avery, Yar,” 2017 (30" x 30")

    “Avery, Yar” started as an attempt to use the energy and the color blocks I loved in the photo below that I took of my grandniece, Avery. She is the first child, daughter, of my brother’s son, the only person in his generation of our growing family with most of my genes, this might not be a good thing (genes can carry…Alzheimer’s), I have great feeling for him. Ms Avery was working in an extremely hard and focused manner to get to the rings above her. Reminded me of her father’s focus when he taught himself to juggle, as a pre-teen.

    I can still see her face in the finished painting (FP), left side as you face the painting, kind of upside down? And that yellow-to-orange shape at the bottom, is her father. Her grandfather’s profile is in there, but I think he got painted over.
    At some point, I turned the canvas 90 degrees, decided that improved it. Then, I added some pattern inspired by this photo of nephew and Avery, the patterns in his shirt, in his tie, and on her onesie (now in upper right-hand area of the FP – and here and there…in other areas).

    The painting still needed more. I added some pattern. The dark red lines, outlined in teal and green (upper left of FP). I originally found this pattern on a street in Italy. I can’t find the original photo of the pattern, but I used the pattern before in the family painting below, to sort of lead the eye into the depth of the painting. so that links the two family paintings.

Then I added the grasshopper. If you can see it, fine; if not, I don’t want to point him out.
    The grasshopper has the following meaning. When I took the “we tell you a short story, you repeat it back to us, 15 mins later” test of the Alzheimer’s drug study I am now in…I got to the end of the story, and all my brain contained for the last noun was, “bug, multi-syllabic.” I KNEW this word was not the correct noun, but said it anyway, “butterfly.” The correct noun was GRASSHOPPER. I have been told that this one error got me into the study, they were looking for folks in worse mental shape. Shortly after I got into the study, one morning, living in cement land, not a grassland, nor prairie, I went out to the stairs to get the morning paper, and noticed, on the metal handrail…a perfect green grasshopper. I said to him, “Stay right there, I wanna get my camera.” He was still there when I returned, even complained that I was NOT getting his best side.

Then I was reading some really awful stuff in the newspaper, another horrible Syrian attack on its own people, and a 4-yr-old little girl whose eyes were shut due to the bomb, who kept asking her grandmother for her mommy, who was dead. Hawra was her name. I later emailed the LA Times correspondent to see if she had an update on Hawra, but I never heard back. That little girl could be Avery, it could have been me. Humans suck.
    I don’t recall if that horror led me to remember the massacre at Babi Yar, but I reviewed Wikipedia’s article on Babi Yar. I put that name in as well, in memory.
    And, I almost forgot, “Avery” of course, is for Avery, my grand niece (in all senses of grand). And “Yar” is for both Babi Yar and the fact that Avery is…“yar” (if unclear on the concept, re-watch Katherine Hepburn, et al, in The Philadelphia Story).

And that is kind of how my paintings go. Maybe an idea or image to start, maybe a photographed pattern added. An anger, a contemporary horror or two. Or a negative emotion thrown on. Then it’s all shapes and colors until it “balances”: dark to light, big to small, enough – but not too much – of any color.
    Enjoy “Avery, Yar.”

Copyright © 2018 by Susan C. Price