Joys Ciera Does Stuff

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Japanese Corner Shop (original photo from Pinterest)

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Grey skies over barn

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Midwest barn

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City Perspective

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First ever fan art! Inspired by this powerful moment in She-ra and the Princesses of Power.

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I am my self-portrait, but it is not me

I picked up my pencil and paint brush three weeks ago for the first time in about a decade. This isn’t a new hobby, rather a return to one neglected. My research on surrealism and surrealist women artists had led me back to the visual arts and my teen years covered in paint and splashing water across paper and canvases. What drove me to do a self-portrait today was my constant return to self-portraits and mirrors in the work of Anaïs Nin and surrealists like Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, and Remedios Varo. I understand there is, in front of me, a representation of the self—that is, the physical self: a face with eyes, nose, mouth, hair. I try to dive deeper into these self-portraits and make sense of what they might suggest, what they might reveal about the painter. It was by completing a self-portrait I could begin to grasp the intricacies of representing my face.

Taking inspiration from Kahlo, who sat in her bed with a mirror after a traumatic accident, I sat in front of my mirror and looked at my face, pencil in hand and paper at the ready. I couldn’t seem to stare too long, becoming uncomfortable with my own face. I realised that I don’t often look at myself for long periods of time. I don’t wear make-up and probably only see my face after I wash and dry it (I also remembering hearing that the longer you stare at your face the more you will find issue with it, so I avoid looking at it so as not to obsess over small details I can’t change such as the shape of my eyes or the way my eyebrows aren’t identical). So, having to stare at my own face for an extended period of time put me in an uncomfortable position. I sat for 50 minutes, roughly sketching out what I thought I was seeing as my face in the mirror. Around the 50-minute mark I looked down and saw that the person on the page was not me, partly due to rusty technical skills, but mainly because I had stopped drawing what I was seeing in the mirror. Instead, I had begun to draw what I wanted my face to be: angular, fuller, possibly more feminine or model-esque (I may have been influenced by watching RuPaul’s Drag Race and seeing the accentuated features on the drag queens). I had not drawn the physical me but rather an envisioned me.

I pulled the page out and sat at my desk ready to start again (after calling my sister who politely informed me that I do not, in fact, have a jawline which could cut cheese). I knew what was wrong with the first attempt: the proportions of the face and the lack of attention to my face. I wanted to badly to see myself on the paper in front of me, hoping for some hyper-realistic portrait which would finally let me see my face outside of a mirror. I took a selfie: truly awful move. The art of the selfie is one I have not mastered and never really intend to. I hoped it might provide reference for next attempt but instead made me feel insecure and worry about my face being unsymmetrical and bland. I deleted those and started with the basics: the face is five eyes wide, divide the length into thirds, and your eyes sit in the middle of your face. I sketched and erased, sketched some more, and erased, called my sister and we worked out where my edges were too soft, jawline too high, eyes too small. Slowly, some version of me (in proportion) appeared on the page. My sister and I couldn’t seem to work out why it wouldn’t look like me. Parts of the portrait did, others did not; there I was and there I was not.

Painting the face added such a dimension to the portrait I began to feel slightly more comfortable with it. I could play with the colour of my hair revealing the slightly orange ends contrasting with the more auburn roots. A watery peach changed the grey-smudged white to a more relatable skin tone. Tortoise-shell glasses break up the distance between my forehead and chin. The face of the page began to feel more real. However, once I was done, I could see again the face is not mine. It is inspired by my face, but it is someone else’s.

Staring at the portrait made me reflect on how I saw the self-portraits of the women surrealists I explore in my thesis. Kahlo painted numerous self-portraits, as did Varo and Carrington and so many other surrealist women artists. Alongside their faces they incorporated elements of the mystical, the alchemical, the animal, the bodily, the erotic and more. These portraits encompass pain, desire, and emphasise a multiplicity of the self. Faces change over time much like the person behind them.

What I realised in my self-portrait was how fragmentary my approach to my face was. I focused on parts of my face and emphasised them in the image: crow’s feet around my eyes, slight bags which hold my tiredness, glasses which are huge. These are fragments of my face I pieced together and ended up with a portrait I am in, but that is not me. There is a slipperiness to the self-portrait, something which cannot be grasped, cannot be captured on paper; there is room behind the image for the painter to explore what they want to find and what they cannot. I couldn’t seem to find my face and I am still working out what that means.

I won’t be drawing any more self-portraits any time soon. My face is still out there somewhere, and I’ll look for it another day.

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MELON • COAL • EAR

I wonder if we would take more notice if someone said they were melancholic. Depression has become depressed, deflated. It pops between our teeth and is flattened between our lips DE • PRESSED Melancholia seems to stick to the roof of my mouth. Its juices marinade my gums and drip from the corners of my lips as I suck. Sweet like Melon. Running down my fingers and coating my wrists. The corners of my mouth, my dry eyeballs, that empty space between my eyebrows and under my forehead feel heavy. Heavy like coal, pressed and formed under the weight of mountains on my shoulders. I can stay this way for weeks before diamonds fall from my eyes. Clear, pure diamonds made from the dusty black nothingness which coats the inside of my skin, It whispers, working it ways in on ems and els, soft sounds that lull. And then it catches in the throat. CH. And you suffocate as you push your hand in to grasp its thread, to stio the tiCK tiCK tiCK of empty. The juices coat the strings The weight corners trap your hand and the tiCK tiCK tiCK counts down the daily suffering as you suffocate There are 3 key ingredients to Melancholia: Melon, Coal, and an Ear.

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Lipgloss

When I was 10 or so I had a lip gloss. I’m not sure how I came to have it, but I suddenly became aware of my lips. Plastic; at an angle, the gloss— a shimmering goo, the palest of pinks—would seep out of the hole. Squeeze the soft body between thumb and finger and the sticky, sweat gloss would ooze out, begging to be slid across my lips. Paint me, but you cannot hide my youth. You cannot hide my innocence. Only smear it with high gloss. The taste was sweet, artificial fruitiness. I could lick it from the tube. But most tasting pleasure came from plastering my lips in layers of this gloss, and feeling how my lips could glide across each other if only my words could glide out that easily. Power comes to those who gloss. A glistening ‘O’ that even in silence whispers sweet nothings to those who want to hear it. Layer upon layer and the gloss would never seem to run out something flickered, dropped, twisted something changed temperature, colour, sound inside of me when the gloss slid across my lips dropped off my fingertips as I wanted to understand the power of painted lips. Even now, lipstick holds the same magic. I could be Beckett’s lips, but more than just words are created, brought forth by these lips. Moans of pleasure, hysteric Laughter, midnight please and peaceful smiles. I touch my dry lips, my cracking, flaking lips. No gloss or balm tastes as good as that one, none smear as smoothly. I am told to look after myself, but there is no fun in that. Apparently layers and layers and layers of gloss will not stop time. But that is fine. My lips are for me to give for me to speak in anger in love in lust in peace.

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Clay Hand Print

My mother has my handprint in clay. My four-year-old hand caught, impressed forever in burnt orange clay. I wonder, if across the years when I placed my hand in the mould, did my mother want me to remain that size. small and (young) I could stay. My short fingers like long slugs splayed out, the palm pressed deeply—too deeply, too eager. I remember my discomfort, my trying to wriggle to freedom as Miss pressed her hand firmly on top of mine. You will be captured. You will exist beyond yourself through this impression. Clay was harder than I expected. I wanted to pat it and hope my toddler hand could appear. I left no mark—I’ve always needed help to prove I exist. A pentagon. They sliced the clay into 5 sides. It sits awkwardly against my mother’s deep brown dresser. Bright orange and it never seems to fade. I think Dad broke it. Chips appeared over the years as I grew and lost myself. I snapped and my handprint -my four-year-old self- seemed to no longer exist. I couldn’t place my hand on top, compare how I had grown. My aging hands that have touched more than my handprint ever could. It remains broken and ageless— I am broken and aging. My cracks seep tears and snot. Superglue won’t fix it, just like a smile won’t fix me. We both exist in the past, and I can no longer hold my own hand and make promises to my little self. She is me and we are broken.

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Knotted Chicken Wire

Knotted chicken wire in your chest, tangled around your ribs, scraping along your insides reminding you of the empty space in you. you are hollow. Nothingness rubs up against your shell. A constant remined that you can’t fucking feel. Someone stab me between the ribs, maybe the blood and puncture will make me feel alive. Feed your hand through the hole And wrench the wire from me. The pain may remind me I exist. Or the wire may pull out my insides, strings of intestines, a firm liver, a stomach that leaks acid. you can leave me empty and I could be a shell. Use the wire to pick my brain through my nose and ears. Try not to scar my face—it’s the only thing left to make me human. To be rid of the weight of thoughts, the scraping of wire. To be without being. A structured bag of bones.

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Cliff

I think about fall off a cliff. Not jumping that's too active. Falling. And finally experiencing that feeling after leaving the ground but before meeting it again. That nothingness; lack of control—none. Falling off a cliff might help me feel again; anything to help me feel again. But everything I think of seems to extreme or not quite right. The movement before you’re hit by a bus. The fear of walking down a dimly lit street at night. Leaning against the bannister while counting how many staircases you’d pass as you tumble. Maybe something more passive. No, not passive. Simple. The wooden floor gently warmed by the morning sun under my un-socked feet. The colour you see when you close your eyes and look at the sun. The icy wind that pinches your cheeks in midwinter as you rush home to change the blue, tingly fingers to pink, mobile (dextrous) ones, clinging to a warm cup of tea (milk no sugar). But falling from a cliff also seems passive. But, for the most part, final. The last feelings you ever felt.

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Wing Mirror View

I stared at you

Through the wing mirror view

And across your face was written:

“Objects appear closer than they seem”