MY FRIEND, JEN, AT A CLOSE DISTANCE*
5.1.07

I'm continuing my series of featuring those in my life who have been, and continue to be, tremendously supportive in helping me to recover and find myself again.

I am absolutely blown away by the work of my dear and beautiful friend, Jen. She's a New York artist and as you can see from her paintings above, incredibly talented. Like scary brilliant in how she depicts and interprets the world talented, and I'm not just saying that because she's one of my closest friends. Seriously, I could stare at her paintings forever.

Jen and I went to college together, I was her RA, actually, and we became good friends. Then we both ended up in New York together, and we grew even closer. Jen has been there through all my trials and tribulations, the pursuit and celebration of all my degrees, my up and down moods, my wedding, the birth of my son, and the postpartum depression that followed. At my sister's wedding in Venice, while pregnant with my son, I ended up in a 15th century hospital with some strange chest infection that was never diagnosed. I left a hysterical, laughing, crying message with Jen. Then my cell phone died in the middle of my message. She called every hospital in Venice until she found me.

When she had her first solo show in L.A. (also amazing), I went to her opening. It had been only a few months since I had been released from the hospital for my psychotic episode, and so everyone was nervous, including me. I wondered whether Jen would see me differently, her mentally ill, bipolar friend. Nope. We just talked the way we always did. She listened, I listened. She talked to me about her work, the men in her life. I told her how tough marriage and mothering was, and how we had five therapists. We laughed. A lot. We shopped. A lot.

Whenever I'm with Jen, I feel like a single girl again.

Thank you, Jen, for your unconditional love and friendship. I just know you will be famous one day, and I will be so proud to know you.

*Artist’s Statement
Presant draws us into dreamlike interiors which are highly evocative, richly painted and dramatically illuminated. The scale, staging of the figures and multiple layers of reality simulate the cinematic experience. Each interior space becomes a physical manifestation of the character’s psyche. Conscious and unconscious desire, memory and projection unfold pictorially. Through the merging of both real and fictitious elements, the artist also investigates the conflation between our media filled lives, and our lived reality. By depicting the subject through the female perspective, Presant represents the female nude as a figure of empowerment, not the object of the male gaze.

The artist mimics the process of reconstructing memory in the development of the composition for the painting. Objects and figures, part real, part imaginary are combined to feel fragmented and pieced together. Once a composition is finalized, at times, using digital technology, Presant meticulously paints the image in oil, adding a new level of coherence and reinterpretation achieved through the hand-made process. The treatment of light unifies the painted surface and plays an important role in the psychological content of the artist’s work. Light and shadow both reveal and conceal. The human form of both subject and viewer defines how each perceives and experiences reality.

Jen is featured in this month's issue of American Art Collector.
Her work can be found on: http://www.lindawarrengallery.com/artists/presant/index.shtml

SISTER
4.25.07
I talked to my younger sister the other day. She always makes me laugh. She is the one who sent me those funky fuschia Morrocan slippers (as pictured in my post below) when I was in the hospital watching spaceships land outside my window and tossing pills out to the aliens.

When my sister and I were single, we used to talk 3-4 times a day. Then we got married and we talked a couple of times a week. Then we had children and now we're lucky to talk once a month. She has two beautiful kids; I have one. That's life.

There's a lot I can say about my sister. A few things for sure: She is a survivor, she carries the invisible scars of a horrible childhood tragedy and crime. She is perceptive, thoughtful, generous, and kind. She makes friends wherever she goes. She's not bipolar like me, although she struggled with depression during her last pregnancy. I was so worried that she would get post-partum depression the way I did. Fortunately, she weathered through it. I kept telling her that she shouldn't be afraid to go on medications; she said okay, but she never did. She's like that. She gave birth to her children with no epidural, no pain relief, nothing. She just takes the pain.

Growing up, I thought she was an irritant, something that got in my way. Then one day when I was about 13, my father took me aside and told me that my sister just wanted to be with me, to learn from me, to be like me. It was like this catharsis: I wept, I felt so bad, I had no idea. After that, she became my best friend. I took her everywhere. She came with me on my first college visit. We drove across Missouri listening to Depeche Mode, the Book of Love, and 10,000 Maniacs. The music was so loud we had no clue the muffler had fallen off. I was probably hypomanic, but it was still exciting, innocent, and fun.

My sister is also the person who called me at 4:30 am on September 22, 2005 to ask why I was sending emails warning people about an earthquake. She detected something was terribly wrong, she called my husband to check on me at work where I was wandering around in a daze. She is the one who drew me heart pictures to remind me how much I was loved when I wanted to die.

Thank you, Sister, for bringing so much love and laughter into my life.