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Moments
of Madness:
Artistic Inspiration
by
Wendy Darling
Note: This article is sprinkled with small versions
of the pieces produced during the wild night of painting described.
To view large versions of the pictures, click on the graphics
or links in the text. You can access the whole group here.
The madness struck at quarter past eight.
I was at my desk, at my computer, mechanically carrying out those
rote duties of my existence, checking email, web sites, bulletin
boards, usenet groups. My eyes flicked back and forth at the dancing
electronic symbols on the monitor, my hand operating as part of
the automaton, operating the mouse, punching the keyboard. My
mind, my heart, was elsewhere, my mouth talking, talking, as it
often does, to the audience of no one, to the walls of the rooms.
I was raving, as I often do, this time full of passionate disgust.
I'd finished a book, The Monstrous Regiment, and it had
thrown me into a mood. I was dissatisfied. Had it ended as I wanted
it to? Yes, perhaps, but not really. There had been a conclusion
but it had been too quick. I listed out the things that should
have happened, the words to be written, spelling out the ache
for potential lost. The walls listened patiently and my tongue
waggled, my lips pursed and opened, puckered, forming the words
as I sputtered out my complaints.
Enough of this! I stopped everything. I had to do something different.
No writing stories now. Too much on the brain. No singing, no
dancing. Not the right mood. Too much energy for a bath. Call
someone? Play piano? Sort through papers? Read? No, no, no, no,
NO!
Now was time for art. Oil crayons. Paper.
Now I was at the closet door, pulling it open. I thrust my hand
inside and grabbed them. More. Wait. Yes, more. The box of supplies.
Where is the plastic box? Under? Did I throw it out? No, I couldn't
have -- ah, here it is! Right under the extra blankets, in a bigger
box. How could I have forgotten?
I tore the box out of its spot, along with the paper, the crayons,
and threw them on the bed. I would be -- no, I wouldn't be. Not
there. The table. In the kitchen. More room there.
I ran in and threw down the box, everything else. I would work
here, yes, perfect, or, no, not perfect. I knew what I needed.
More. So much more.
Candles, lights! The big oil lamp, tall red candles, the giant
white candle on the black stand. I turned out the lights, lit
the candles. Hiss, hiss, hiss!
The box flew open and I was digging. All the remnants of my past
artistic passions were in there. Decoupage paste, silver pipe
cleaners, bottles of paint. Black paint! Bottles of it? Yes, oh,
yes, perfect! But where are the brushes? I dug down and found
one, a big one. Then another. Then I had a dozen. Fine. On the
table, along with the paint. Great!
Had to have something to pour the paint into, also some water.
I flung open the kitchen cabinet with the cups. A mug, a glass?
I reached for one, a big green one, filled it with water, threw
it on the table. Then I got the plastic cups. Another cabinet,
old picnic supplies.
I had it all now. I sat down, I took out my brush and-- no, wait.
I was clean, in clean shirt, clean pants. I ran to the bedroom
and threw off my clothes. Where was a T-shirt? At the bottom of
the closet I found the black. I pulled it over my head and immediately
left the room, slamming the door behind me. The bedroom was gone,
all that existed was the table. If anyone called, I would no answer.
If anything made me want to go back there, I wouldn't obey it.
The passion had to be obeyed.
I stared down at the table, the glowing candles, the paint, the
brushes, everything laid out, and inside I was roaring, a geyser,
a waterfalling, a giant glass orb exploding. Light should be shooting
out my fingertips!
I ran to the stereo and turned out the wild
Scandinavian music, turned up the volume.
There was one more thing. Food from the counter. Mashed potatoes,
gravy carrots, flung on a plate, heated up, to be devoured as
I could. I was a barbarian. I was a mongrel dog. I was a hungry
beast with giant claws. I certainly wasn't human, wasn't typing
out stories on my computer.
I poured out the blackness into my cup. I smelled it, tasted
it, as I thrust the brush in, attacked the paper. I snarled, jabbing
with my brush. A mat on the floor, supposed to be a bed, and then
the woman, supposed to be the Dominatrix, with two breasts, a
head, a body, legs -- well, sort of legs. I can't draw figures.
But it was a woman, like a goddess, plump and rounded. The mat
became a carpet, black, but then it looked like a horse's head.
Or maybe a dog's head. I painted in an ear, shaped the face. The
woman was riding the beast! I filled in the front leg, the
body, the back, and yes, she was riding the beast. A woman on
her mat was now riding a great dog or no, a horse. I painted in
the mane. A horse.
Done. The paper was set aside. I force a few forkfuls of mashed
potatoes and gravy into my mouth. I was eating too fast. I didn't
care. I tore off another sheet of paper, dunked my brush in the
ink black paint, and began again.
Three more paintings I reeled off in rapid succession.
The first was supposed to be beautiful. I put my face up to the
paper and unfocused my eyes. Draw Shyla, I thought, and make him
beautiful and healing. The brush hit the paper and I knew it was
not Shyla but I could draw the beautiful or, no, the healing.
Acceptance. The glob of paint grew arms or really arcs. It isn't
specifics that matter. This was acceptance, yielding, water, and
around it I drew waves. Across the bottom I
painted out: LIFE LOVE ACCEPTANCE.
I put the paper aside and leaned over another piece. Something
beautiful, a being with long hair. One side of hair, then the
other. A face? A body? It turned into a black puddle, but it was
a body. Not representational, just symbolic. Is this expressionism?
It is at least a figure. It's dark, covered in veils, and I blur
the face. Around it there is darkness, ribbons of black. In my
head I hear the words and across
the top I write them: NIGHT SLIPPED AROUND ME LIKE BLACK SILK
VEILS.
Again I begin a new one. This will be a something beautiful.
I'd like to make something beautiful, a figure. I stroke out the
hair, a graceful line. Now the face and oh, that's not beautiful,
it looks like a face from Easter Island. I draw a mouth, to make
it beautiful, but it looks thin. I fill it in, make the lips larger,
and it looks even more like a idol. I decide to paint in a base.
I make a body that's not human, but a lump. I think of the Bird
Woman in Freaks, and there are no legs, only a crazy tale,
a serpent's tale. This is something like in Grigori, a
sort of gargoyle or a serpent creature, a woman, a man, wriggling
under the water in the cavern. It has many arms that writhe like
snakes, Medusa-like, a hair that moves. In the air are whirling
stars, birds with snakes instead of wings, that fly outward glimmering
in the sun like wet fish.
All along I'm eating more food. All along I feel the power thrumming
through me. These aren't very good paintings, but I'm working
up to it. I have to keep on going. I can't stop. Can't stop. Can't
stop!
I try again. My figure are not working out but I want to draw
people. Sometimes I can draw them in shadow. I do a head and it's
lumpy, just a blob, so is the body, legs, arms, but it's a figure,
splayed out, with wide hips, a woman floating on an invisible
bed. I was to draw her partner on top of her, writhing, and I
draw another body, misshapen but still a body. They blobs of black
all flow together and soon it's a tangle of limbs -- wait, yes,
that's it! I write A TANGLE
OF LIMBS in an arc, and then I fill the air with motes of
energy, dots all around, spinning into infinity.
Forget people. I obviously can't do people. I know what I'll
do. I'll do what I always do, the image, the
idea that's always in my head, of the towers, the castle on the
hill. Such drama, such a cliche, like Dracula, like
the tower in a thousand stories, fairy tales, Romantic paintings.
A tower of doom I paint, with high towers and a mountain with
sheer side, a cliff plunging almost straight down to the sea,
half a mile down, and then a mountain range that appears and then
disappears as I paint over it. It's all black. I paint and paint
and paint, filling it all in. The tower is starkly powerful. Then
I see a speck of black, a stray dribble from my brush. Nothing
happens by accident. I dribble more. I dribble into it's thick
and then I pick the paper up and blow on it, make it run down
like black blood. I drip water on it from a brush, make it run.
The painting is crying. I want to make it bleed. In the box I
find red. Yes, exactly, here I go, squirting the red into another
plastic cup and then I'm doing the goth cliche, dripping red on
to the sheet, into the sky, coaxing it down to run like rivulets
of blood, death, like the book, all destruction and violence,
ugliness.
I set it down. I'm done with that one. At last I have done a
good one. Ugliness it is, yet it's beautiful. The phone rings.
I ignore it.
I am powerful. I'm going to do a figure again. Breasts, sides,
hips, something like lower limbs, I guess in a skirt, just flowing
down. The arms I make thrust upward, triumphant, female power,
the head is high, the hair wild. This
is the angry Corinna, this is the Red, this is my big red
paintbrush cutting a swath between her legs and then up and down
her body, her breasts, her arms, her face. I cut ribbons of red
down the sides, like banners, and I etch black around them. Fierceness
there.
There's a knock at the door. My best friend. I don't want him
there but I humor him. I'm in the middle of something, can't he
see? He gives me four "papples," a cross of apples and
pears, and makes me eat one. My stomach is so full from stuffing
myself but I eat it. He examines the pictures and tries to interpret.
The red woman is the Minoan snake goddess, he says. I deny this.
These are not representational. He says they are, I disagree.
I tell him I like the castle painting even though it's a goth
cliche, the dripping blood. He says the woman on the beast is
Cora from Wraeththu, that the being in black with the swirling
veils in Panthera. I tell him none of it's on purpose, that these
are like the paintings of people in insane asylums. He tells me
I should sell my art, I tell him no, I'm just momentarily crazy
and any crazy person could do it. He asks me how I like my papple.
I tell him it was good, just like a pear really, and like a pear,
without a real core, so I've eaten it whole. He pulls a face.
I'm not interested in going for a power walk, am I? No, I'm not
interested. He leaves.
It's after he leaves that I really go mad. Everything is loud,
crisp, everything clear, even without my glasses, only the candles
for light. The music is cheery, sounding more Irish than Scandinavian,
all frenzied fiddles. The birds are quiet in their corner and
my stomach is suddenly aching from the food. Goodness, goodness,
what to do?
I decide to trace my hand with a paintbrush. I do it. Looks stupid.
I crumble the paper and toss it onto the counter. That won't work.
I want to draw a hand clawing. I want a hand. I can do a handprint!
I paint my palm and fingers black,
slap it down on the paper, drag it down, like the hands of a dying
man, a dying woman. I want it to be clawing, though, and the
fingernails should be bleeding red. I paint the tips of my fingers,
heavy with red paint, and claw at the paper over and over until
there are streaks. Red comes to the bottom right, a little puddle,
and the messiness expresses something right, something like the
pool of blood after a murder, all Helter Skelter like, gruesome.
I stand up. Am I done? Am I? No, my hand is still dirty. I put
my foot on the pad of paper and hold it down while I tear another
sheet off with my clean hand. Might as well use the rest of the
mess on my hand. I smear it about. I see chaos, I see a head.
I paint my hand with black and red and paint in a figure
in a robe, an angel, and woman, and around here is power,
flames, passion. I could paint the entire sheet red and it wouldn't
show what I feet. Not enough. But enough. This is over. I am done.
I stand up and look down. Yes, I'm done. I got to the sink and
scrub my hands. The madness is over.
About the Author:
Wendy Darling (nickname Wiebke Fesch) is a web designer, fanfic author,
and editor of Inception. She lives in Atlanta, GA, where she is self-employed,
operating her own web design business, Metro Girl. Wendy is co-author of a Wraeththu
Mythos novel called Breeding
Discontent, and is an editor with Immanion Press. You can reach Wendy
at wdarling@abraxis.com.
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