Portrait of a Woman

It is a watercolor portrait of an anonymous naked woman. The perspective is from her backside - sharp outlined dark-brown hues frame her pear-shaped figure - seated with legs crossed upon a spit of land that juts out from the right-hand corner. Metaphorically this piece of land is her skala – which means in Russian a rock solid foundation. I know Vera painted it this way, because she referred to that word repeatedly during an arduous immigration to America.

The woman portrait is meditating upon the eastern horizon, an aesthetic optimism. What pervades is the sun, a vibrant bright yellow that creeps up above the ocean’s horizon, casting sparkling light off the ripples of a vast dark blue ocean. The sky is bleached white with hints of light blue. The ocean is central to her journey; that which Vera, my lover, had crossed in absolute single-mindedness to remain with me, uprooted from her homeland.

The watercolor’s subtle stage is engrossing by a combination of elements; water, sun, earth, and ether that pervades in our flesh and blood. It captures that odd law that art deals with what we see and feel, limited in acute awareness, the provision of interest that we read into it. Just as the watercolor vision animates sensibility, the woman’s mild posture and sunrise ocean view – the subject matter – is determined by her feelings of longing to return from where she came. The woman in the painting is both generous and sensitive in form, just as Vera was to me. Vulnerable in the objectivity of this simplistic scenic consistency the element of execution is portioned to the moment; there is no over-treatment of feeling, no meaningless distinction of what she wants to convey to me.

During Vera’s time of transition, I encouraged her to carve on paper with brush and paint without regard to technical or formal restrictions, but instead from that valid “germ” that is inevitably the affirmation of inspiration. It was meant as a cathartic approach given the demands of a foreign culture thrust upon her. When living behind the Iron Curtain, her perspective of Western culture promised individual prosperity, an idyllic freedom of choice to achieve one’s potential. Once upon its soil, she discovered all the restrictive socioeconomic crudities that became painfully obvious, and in some instances, even more so than what she had left behind. Disillusioned, I thought an artistic outlet would relieve the angst.

Before Vera left, I would cast a glance at this painting placed upon her altar’s easel, one among dozens, but it had not grabbed me nor tangled its connection around my heart until she departed. Now in these aching moments of separation I regret to have not praised her work more openly, discussed and analyzed the symbolism in ways that would have drawn out of her psyche those submerged thoughts she had learned to bury. As she would reflect about her childhood memories, her parents strictly enforced in fear of political reprisals, “We only opened our lips to eat.”

Starring back at me, the watercolor sits next to a palette dappled in dried mixtures of colors. Her cleaned brushes are neatly placed, arranged in order of their width next to a pile of partially filled tubes of paint. Left alone with these artifacts and no distractions of her presence, I’m caught in the scenic painting’s consistency, at first with avoidance to go behind the meaning. What eventually filtered through my mind was the compositional accruement enriched by the why that confronted me The provision of interest which consists in placing advantageously right in the middle of the sunlight, this mirror of Vera’s self, connected to the garden of life that I know she cherished deep in her heart. She had built a massive highly productive summer garden in our backyard, making it a daily horticulture project. She did that as a means in replicating the village life she left behind.

True to her shy, subtle disposition, Vera posited this final watercolor image in perfect sense. I am now aware of how cunningly she courageously held the secret of her personal hardship. Life in a capitalistic auto-driven, consumer- based exurbia with an imbroglio economy on the skids was not only suffocating her, but reminding her of the traumas after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In that regard there is nothing superficial about how delicately balanced her last watercolor painting improvised to me her inner monologue that went unspoken between us.

In her own way, this watercolor rendered the opening of her heart to my own frail vessel of mind. Ironically, even upon my suggestion, I blundered. I had become pessimistic about our future; unemployed, unable to pay our bills, the threat of losing our home, the culmination of all that I had worked for was crumbling about me, us. This is the way things happen, lessons in reality that life is all confusion. Fraught with the uncertainty of our future, I failed to reinforce the exquisite essence of her existence that could sustain me. .

She lived in absolutes, pragmatically in concentrated feelings about anything, squeezing out its value. But I lack these traits, so I don’t know if she was dismissing me as a fool or admonishing me since the woman in the painting had its back toward me. Or is she is showing me that a new horizon is there for the taking. Vera, whether metaphysically or not, aimed her last painting directly at me before returning to her village birthplace. With a deep sigh, I utter skala.