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.