Three Hands

Voices of the Ancestors, oil on panel, 16 x 20 inches

Two hands are natural and emblematic of human beings—one hand is tragic—but what about three? I have a series of paintings using the theme of three hands. For most people, the images are perplexing, and that is okay with me, because I like mysterious pictures.

My first painting with three hands was made while I lived in Granada, Spain. My apartment was high on a hill in the Albayzín neighborhood, near the flamenco caves where dancers and musicians performed every night. I could paint, and walk around shooting photos during the day, and go to the caves at night. The house was great. I entered from a small street that had no cars, and passing through a narrow kitchen and living room, a couple stairs led to a spacious patio that overlooked housetops and the tree-lined river that flowed from Sacromonte into town. Directly opposite on a hill stood the walls and towers of Alhambra, the World Heritage Site. Another door on the patio led to a cozy bedroom.

Artist models are sometimes hard to come by, but with a mirror, a self-portrait can be made. I started a self-portrait, but wanted expression, so I included hands reaching to my face. Maybe because I was alone, and desired company, I added a hand coming from the top of the painting.

Soon, a French woman I met in Venice, Italy arrived to visit. We had become great friends in Venice, especially since she is a professor of art in a University in Nimes, France. I had visited her where she lived in Provence, and now she visited me. I did a portrait of her, and again, added an extra hand reaching down from the top of the painting, as if to touch her head. She liked the result, and also the self-portrait I had done. “You must do a series”, she suggested. I liked her idea, and in the next several months made more paintings with three hands.

Anne, oil on canvas, 20 x 20 inches

When I went to Berlin, I made a painting of my young German friend Anne, and used my own hand as the third one. Another time, I painted an abandoned house, high on a hill, in Andalusia, Spain. I put in three hands, as if gesturing. I call the piece “Voices Of The Ancestors”, as if spirits were re-visiting a place on earth they were familiar with.

Sometimes, while artists work, their unconscious is emerging in the process.   “Great art is as irrational as great music.  It is mad with its own loveliness.”  ~George Jean Nathan

I cannot entirely explain the meaning of having three hands in these paintings. It is to offer an element of mystery and surprise, and also my belief is that I have a muse, and I surmise I am including one hand of my muse in the paintings.

Self-Portrait With a Rose, (made while in Berlin), oil on linen, 18 x 24 inches

“Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.”  ~André Gide


Muse

What is a muse? Muse in Greek mythology, is one of the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. Muses inspired and presided over the different creative arts. Sometimes artists are well aware that something bigger than themselves has taken over their creativity. In these moments they become like a hollow reed upon which a mysterious wind blows a sublime and fathomless melody. Afterwards, the startled artist steps back and says, Wow! Where did that come from?

As William Blake so eloquently wrote, the muse allows us
To see a World in a Grain of Sand, 
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, 
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour.


Thomas Edison was a great inventor, but I take issue with his statement, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” I believe that when Michelangelo, at the age of twenty-four, produced his colossal sculpture, David, he was completely inspired by a force greater than himself that blew through his every fiber, giving him strength. Certainly he was a unique channel and his talents begged for inspiration that attracted Spirit.

One of the greatest minds of all time acknowledges as much. Albert Einstein said: “One of the most beautiful things we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. 
” And he said, “To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.”

Imagination is the ability to dream while awake and in that heavenly state, be surprised by the “sirens songs,” blowing from across eternity. Walt Whitman knew this. The great American poet wrote:

As for me, I know nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,

Or stand under the trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with any one I love,

Or sleep in bed at night with any one I love,

Or watch honeybees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon...

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, 

Or of stars shining so quiet and bright,

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring...

What stranger miracles are there?

The greatest artists, writers, inventors, et al. know that to truly be fulfilled is to actually lose oneself and wander in mystery . . . to be guided by strangeness and trust that a wild ride is towards the mystical ocean that is the beginning and end; both.

“I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.” Jackson Pollock

When I was but a twenty-two year old art student, my homework was to do a self-portrait. Every night I stood in front of a mirror and painted. The task was arduous for I stared at myself for hours on end, trying to faithfully represent myself in oil paint on canvas. But something took over so that I became inspired to continue. In the end I produced a painting that went beyond myself and once I stepped outside of the creative reverie and brought my painting to class, I thought did I do that?  Well, I did, but my muse stood next to me, singing her siren songs.