too beautiful

One day you called me on the phone to say that you needed my help with a painting. "I'm stuck. I need you to come shake me up." What an honor for me! We had painted collaboratively before, but this was different. You were bringing me in to help with a problem.

When I came to your studio and saw the work in progress I understood your dilemma at once. The problem with your painting was that it was perfectly beautiful. It was an interpretation of Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam. It took up two 4 by 8 foot masonite panels. On one panel Adam was as exquisitely defined in your unique style as Michaelangelo's Adam was in the old master's style. Your Adam's musculature was faceted with black geometric shapes fueled with color, his face was the perfectly proportioned face of a Masai warrior. His penis slumped in a perfect slumber of purple and red, his hypnotic reach toward his maker beautifully reflected the languorous gesture of the original.

The figure was without the awkwardness, struggle and absurdity that provide the life-force of your work, but instead was a fluid flow of shape and color that gracefully honored the original. The panel presenting God was less defined, but ran the danger of ending up as exquisite as Adam. For you, this was a problem. It was easy to be simply beautiful; you strive for tension, for the beauty of discomfort, the off-balance of the misfit, the asymmetry of the bulldog’s face.

You took a seat at the far end of your studio to watch me work. I put on one of your splattered flannel shirts, rolled up my sleeves and squinted to more truly see the painted surface. Anything I added would take away from the perfection you had achieved, and yet that was why I had been invited. You enjoyed my dilemma. "You're worried about ruining it", you grinned.

setting to work

At first I tip-toed in with an unobtrusive triangle of purple here, pushed back that indecisive area over there - nothing to destroy the basic balance. As the painting began to break through the barriers of my ability to perceive it, I found my boat feet, gathered my courage and set to work to do what I had been summoned for.

I pulled out your cans of house paint from the back table. Beige and purple dripped on the floor already thick with hardened sloops and spatters. Black to isolate, dirty white to redefine, ancient red to accelerate, mint green to mystify, coaxing, signifying, finger-painting, levitating, surfing the moment, I was messenger, deliverer, rutabaga digger, erupter, eluder and inciter of riot. At the end of that first session the genders of both God and Adam had become ambivalent, the figure of a horse had appeared behind the shoulder of God, a child had emerged from the womb of Adam-become-Adam/Eve, and as a final gesture of punctuation, I stuck one end of a stray strip of cellophane into the wet paint at Adam/Eve's nipple so it hung like an umbilicus of milk.

Time for lunch. You were thrilled, (though you removed the cellophane right away - we were not to confuse the issue by mixing media). My intervention achieved its purpose. I shattered all the visual agreements that you started with, in much the same way you would have done yourself if I hadn't come to help. You were able to continue from that visit using my momentum. You told me later that you shared with the members of your critique group about my contribution and how it had broken you free of the grip of being too beautiful.

I had much to reflect on after this first session. Of all the paintings you could have asked me for help on, why a painting of God? It may be that you asked for my help because you thought I'd take an interest the way I'd appreciate being involved in a painting of a Studebaker, being into old cars. Maybe you were magnetically drawn to a difficult subject between us, and hoped that we could find common ground as we shared in an experience of color and shape and the delectable mess of artistic creation. Or maybe this was the stage for a battle between forces greater than ourselves, God and Godlessness fighting it out on the painted surface.

It occurred to me that you may be endeavoring to open a door that you knew I had walked through. I so hoped to walk with you through that door! Even without having yet experienced Messiah, I saw a place for myself in bringing you closer to an acknowledgement of the divine.

At the same time, bubbling up under my self-satisfaction was a persistent icky feeling. To treat the subject of God with my accustomed rough and sloppy abandon with the brush made me feel that I was smudging filth on something sacred.

God and Madam

When I returned weeks later to continue our work you told me that you had named the painting. You clucked with pleasure at the title you’d found. With your signature playfulness with words, you had named the painting of God and Adam "God and Madam".

My brow began to knit. I challenged you on your choice of titles. Yes, I had helped develop Adam into a sexually ambiguous character, and yes the word “madam” included Adam while also referencing the female. Clever though the play on words was, I couldn’t stop thinking of the meaning of the word “madam” that has to do with prostitution. Associating the divine creator and his first creation with a brothel-mother made me queasy. What had I stepped into, and why did it smell so bad?

Seeing that I didn’t enjoy the joke, your eyes narrowed, your lips became resolute and your figure staunch. Here was my friend the bulldog again, immovable and ready for battle. You were clearly not bound by the notions that limit me. You weren’t worried about not properly honoring some revered figure because, as you said, "This painting is merely an homage to Michaelangelo's great work. God and Adam are nothing more than characters. They have no further meaning for me."

My brow was in full knit by now. In record time I knit mittens, booties and a muffler for the chill wind of that moment. I had forgotten who you are - not just irreverent punster, defiant and uncompromising, but always your own master. We had reached a critical gulf: you were beholden to no one. I was beholden to my Mysterious Divine Power, though without a roadmap to indicate where the path was and how to stear clear of brambles.

We took our joust to the painting, armed with heavy, wet brushes. The paint did fly. The horse became a strong presence foreshadowing the Apocalypse. Adam regained his masculinity, the emerging child became wise and joyful, and old man God took on a look of madness under your hand (I didn’t paint on God), wide-eyed and confounded from the effort of creating and being created. You painted like a bulldog running free, and I painted like someone left holding the leash.

A door had indeed opened, but not the door I'd expected. I had supposed you and I would have a breakthrough to a new level of communing that would include the divine. I'd imagined you curiously inquiring about my love for God, confessing to an empty place inside you that yearned for the divine, allowing me to lead you to a new understanding. Instead, I was the one being led through a door to a new level of questioning. This was the time to ask my artist self: Am I the master of my art, or do I submit all my endeavors to a higher master? What does a painting look like that is made in submission to God? Isn't there a commandment against making a graven image of God? (And didn't it bother anybody that Michaelangelo painted God?)

I went home and stopped painting for years.