HEY ITS THE CANCER DIVA !!

Cancer Divas first BLOG !!
um the first one is the hardest blog of all, then after that it is hard to stop.
I am glad that you all like my paintings .
More randomness to come I promise , I am just not use to writing a blog yet ...
Cancer Diva

Basement (the Cathedral)

Painting by the Cancer Diva

Essay by Vincent Blackwood

I keep coming back to this again and again. I love the dark, moody feel of it. It reminds me of a great black and white Gothic mystery film. And like any good mystery it feels tragic, lonely and hard to fully understand. To me it feels like a nightmare set in a deserted cathedral at midnight.

One of the conventions of old horror films is what is hidden in the catacombs or basement. Think of “Psycho”, “Phantom of the Opera”, “Dracula”, “Metropolis” and dozens of others. Whenever someone goes down in the basement, they are making the journey into their own subconscious. Only having the guts to go through that door, can they finally do battle with the self-made monster that lurks down there. And if they just ignore it, as most of us do in our real lives, the monster just gets bigger and more dangerous. As Calderon wrote in "Life is a Dream"; "Many battles lie ahead, but the hardest awaits me now, mine own self."What I love even more than the mood of dread and loneliness, is what is in the basement. Those odd, undefinable figures entwined.

Depending on my mood I can see it as passion that is about to be discovered or a murder in progress. The woman at the top has been captured at a critical moment in her life, right before she sees the drama; a monster killing someone or lovers caught in the act? It is easy to confuse the two, particularly in the dark.

Window

Painting by the Cancer Diva

Essay by Vincent Blackwood

Right after her surgery, Cancer Diva told me all she could do was sit at the window at her parents farm and watch the damn squirrels. She got to know the squirrels well...too well. Squirrel TV. All squirrels, all the time. What made it more painful is that the autumn is CD's favorite time of year. She loves the smells, the colors, the crispness of it all. And she was missing it. The season was exploding beyond the glass, just out of reach.

This painting is so special to me because I see a portrait of depression too. Alone in a darkened room, feeling numb and cold as the world goes on in the distance.

Writer and painters seem to be apart from the world, and not by choice. Given a gift, and the curse, of sensitivity. It makes them simply not fit in. I know I feel like an outsider. Like the lonely figure in the painting. All my closest friends feel the same way. A league of the lonely. Yeah, our parties are grand.

That's why this painting means so much to me. And in the end all I can write about is my feelings. Those knotted, gnarled thoughts that are always shifting and never at rest. It is all that I have that I know is different and worth writing about. As I look at CD's painting I see her doing the same thing with colors and ambiguous shapes. They can mean so many things.

I understand that longing that she is painting. Longing to be a part -- but it is so hard to be understood.

Writers and painters record what they see. We watch life and wonder when we will have one too. If we can write or paint our feelings accurately enough maybe we will understand something that is impossible to paint or put into words. But we can't help it. Our heads keep gnawing at us at how very stupid it all is -- but something -- I can't explain -- pushes us on to keep trying.

Maybe it is that need for a connection with someone like us.Maybe if we get close, we'll get a glimpse of what is happening deep inside. Perhaps we will get a little peace for a moment. This is a very holy picture. This is a hymn. As I look at CD's work I begin to see her searching for a spiritual peace. It is a search for a peace that can only come from finding home. But as she looks out the window, it is not her home. It is dark inside and it is autumn. And she is missing it.

Why Me?

Essay by the Cancer Diva

Have I been tested enough: this depression, this mental illness, this cervical cancer. Why do all my skeletons have to be out there constantly interrupting my peaceful life. I have a good life. Just when things are going great, I get suddenly thrown into an abstract world of ugly, mean life-threatening monsters.So, as I do in my nightmares, I take my paint brush and cover it with my favorite color -- pink. Yep, I walk straight up to the monster of cervical cancer -- and depression -- and I paint love into the monster's heart. Unconditional love so it won't hurt me physically or emotionally. I paint on that mother-fucking monster and I make it pretty. And in return the monster decides not to kill me. I wasn't about to let it.

The monster not only became pink, he became his own color, the color he always wanted to be. And after the monster met me in war, or during surgery, he looked at people who he was supposed to kill with cervical cancer and he could no longer do it.

Plush Crowbar (I'm not crazy)

by Vincent Blackwood

I love a mystery. Who doesn't? But there is one cliche that just pisses me off. The detective gathers all the suspects together and announces the killer seems normal but is really insane. Then he points to a sweet little old lady, and says, "You're the murderer."

Revealed -- she gives herself away and begins to act "crazy". You know: the drooling, talking like a five year old, voting Republican. I know, I know...you see it every day. It is heartbreaking. But to me, it is bad writing; an insult to every person who has ever suffered from mental illness. And that is a very large number.

Part of the reason that fact is not well known, is the stigma that is associated with it; a veil of silence that is suffocating millions of Americans. It and other forms of mental illness are a disease like cancer or high blood pressure. But even many doctors forget that. Too often the sufferer feels ashamed, alone and like a freak. They are frighten of how you will treat them. So they not only have the disease to deal with but other people’s primitive view of it. Wait a minute! Who is the monster? Who is the hero in this farce?

My heroes -- my two best friends -- they suffer from depression. Their brains don't work like yours. They are so different, thank God.
Yet I know how I feel is so often what they feel. The only difference between them and I, is that I'm better at hiding...no. I am better at lying -- about my true feelings. I'm a coward. I don't want the trouble that comes with being emotionally honest. So I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut and blend in with the other sheep. Baa.

Walking down the street, I love to listen to conversations. Wow! I am so happy I am not chatting with the average hunk of mutton. Our society demands that we hide our true feelings. Who cares -- or wants to know -- what the person next to us on the street is thinking. Other people might not understand the pain and loneliness. It could scare them away. So they talk about “American Idol”, Football or the weather. Like a wolf caught in a stainless steel bear trap, I'd sooner gnaw my own leg off than talk with a normal person and their conditioned responses. Give me my friends.

My friends are thought of as "too sensitive". They, to me, suffer from an artistic temperament. It makes them so amazing to talk to. The B.S. that we tend to put up so people think we are together, and sane, they drop. It is the real deal; fresh and honest.

I meet so many people who seemed to have died. Seems so hard. They've killed their inner child. To me it is like watching a pod person from that grand film from the fifties; "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". I hope none of my friends fall asleep and awake cold and sensible. I hope they never lose their sensitivity and sincerity that makes them so vibrant. So alive. Umm...so not boring.

I too suffer from depression. So I guess that makes me mentally ill. I hope so. I’d be so proud to be like my best friends, my heroes. We are not monsters. We are not the punch line to an Agatha Christie mystery. We are not cliches. Sorry, we won't sit in that box so you won't have to think about it. I know our crime too; we are people who express our self with more clarity than the daily government approved dosage of honesty. And yeah, I guess that can be a little scary. Too bad. We will not be silent anymore.

Not in the Pink

"Not in the Pink"

Painting by the Cancer Diva

Essay by Vincent Balckwood

Sometimes I fear I will never write again. I just lose all interest. I feel so blank and dead inside. I fear it might be a sign of a greater problem. It might be a symptom of my depression about to rise up out of my subconscious like a horrible Leviathan. It will pull me down through dark waters again. Will this be the time I don’t come back?

That's the thing with depression. It is something you can try to control but something you never escape. Like a ghost it is always in the background haunting me. Only someone who has been through it can truly understand that thing inside me. The thing that is trying to hurt me.

Cancer Diva (CD) understands. She knows the monster called depression even better than I. I flatter myself by saying we are kindred spirits. I’m happy to say we are friends. Three months ago, she was going to show me her favorite Andy Warhol prints at the Mayo Clinic and we would sketch each other. I was nervous as hell. I had to get new pencils, a new pad. She went to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I didn't want to embarrass myself by looking like a complete amateur. Normal people get a hair cut or new clothes for a dinner. Art Geeks get new pencils and drawing pads.

But the day before our grand adventure, she went for a check up. They found she had cervical cancer and had to operate right away.“Great,” she told me, “clinical depression and now this -- not a great mix!”

I vowed to keep her spirits up in my humble way. I'd write stories, send her cards, drawings and little happy place boxes. I wanted to do anything to keep the monster from dragging CD away. I decided it was part of my job description; to help her find her happy place. (Her mother later told me that CD look forward to getting mail. It, she said, really helped bring a smile to her face on the hard days. That made me feel very good. Thanks, mom.)

My friend, Tom, gave CD a sketch book and CD said that she was going to fill it with her feelings during the hard days ahead. I knew it would take her away from her problems if only for a moment. And I knew it was also a kind of magic that could cure so much.

Three months later after so much pain, radiation and chemo therapy we got together to show each other our art work and sketch each other. It was during really horrible, icy, bitter cold weather, but CD wouldn't cancel. She HAD to get together.

She did it because she is such a good friend. But she also has reason to be proud of her drawings; portraits of the emotions that were haunting her. Snap shots of the monsters. The first one I saw I call "Not in the Pink". It is so intensely personal. Only CD could have drawn it and only CD could have drawn it at that very moment. It shows a storm of emotions that will never be again. She was about to begin a journey that would change her forever. But this was the beginning. This was someone about to step off the cliff uncertain if the parachute would work. Before her was the dark unknown.

Before the surgery CD looked to see if she could spy the cancer. What she saw and drew effected me as much as Van Gogh's Starry, Starry Night. After all both are intensely stylized landscapes but CD has become her own landscape. In the yellow center is a spooky wishbone which is the cancer -- or its effect on CD's body. Above it I see her wonderfully stylized hand. The entire design, the amazing use of color and pillowy textures all make something painfully beautiful.

It is the pull of opposites: terror and stress played against calming, peaceful feelings that gives the work such power. I look at it again and again and keep seeing new things to love and be passionate about. It makes me want to grab people and demand them to look at it -- and understand everything that CD went through to produce it. This isn’t something she wanted to paint. It is something she had to paint -- a matter of life and death. She looked right at the monster and drew flowers around it. Now that’s cool!

Rhapsody in Pink

by Vincent Blackwood

An Introduction to the Art of the Cancer Diva

True art is the ultimate renewable resource. It always has something new to give you. You can come back to it over and over and it doesn't disappoint, it just grows more powerful.

You think it would have hit me the first time I saw the Cancer Diva’s (CD’s) drawings. We had dinner together and she showed them to me. But their power really hit me later that night as I sat alone in my apartment. CD was kind enough to lend them to me. I knew I had to scan them. I knew I had to post them on the web. I had to get people to see them and to understand everything that was behind them.

But my passion and enthusiasm really surfaced as I took each drawing out of their plastic covers to scan them. I suddenly felt like the first scholar to see the dead sea scrolls. He must have handled them with such care. He knew exactly what they were worth -- how invaluable every inch, ever mark on them was.

To me these drawings were the most valuable, delicate things I had ever had the privilege to hold. There are millions of diamonds in the world, but only one of each of these drawings. They tell a story of an incredible, painful, joyful journey. They are sad and funny. They are about lost and found dreams. They tell so intensely what it is to be human -- but they are written in a wonderful unknown language I am just learning. I know that they have so much to tell me that I don't understand completely yet.

Each time I look at them I see something new. I understand a little more. These are not pictures of solid things after all. These are portraits of very fragile feelings that were there for a moment and are now gone forever. I know I bring something of myself to each drawing. But CD left that space so I could complete the circle. As you will find -- she’s big on circles. I hope you will look at these and not think or judge. Just let go and feel. I am a better person for doing that and for knowing CD.

Paintings

At Depression's Window

Memory and Hell

Cathedral



Goodbye Uterus

Not in the Pink