The Gaze

                                                       Portrait of a Young Woman - Vermeer          


                                   The gaze rolls into several eyes, transforms the viewer's point of vision and returns through his/her eyes to culture.  --Bracha Ettinger


Portrait of a Young Woman shares wall space with Young Woman With a Water Jug and Woman With Lute.   Unbelievably, I have the room and space to myself on this February afternoon at the Metropolitan.   I am in a "matrixial border space".  The "distance-in-proximity" continuously re-attunes my erotic antennae as I sit with this painting.  This fills me with an interior stillness.  The "border-time"  described by Chrysanthi Nigianni in her recent article The Matrixial Feminine... is both elusive and disturbing. I am making a conscious choice to immerse myself in reading the challenging and shapeshifting work of Bracha Ettinger's work on"matrixial borderspace."   I want to challenge myself with creating "new spaces of encounter" with the hopes of  fashioning "new modes of transformative thinking."  This is crucial in my work as an artist who is committed to painting in the 21st century.

My pilgrimage year of meeting and learning from paintings in museums and exhibitions across the country has begun.  I mine the depths of Ettinger's language searching for a way in which to write about my experience with these paintings and to create new spaces of encounter.

Vermeer's brush strokes carry across the distance of six centuries.   They are right here, with me, in front of me, inscribing themselves within me as I present my painter's queries. This young woman's hair is only a few shades darker than the brown umbers behind her.   The canvas breathes. The breathe is palpable across centuries.  Distance - in-proximity.  The  varied brushstrokes of  dark, humus colored paint in this section of the canvas are alive and vibrant.   How can this be?

The palest of blue wraps and entrances in its folds around the figure.  Her left lower hand is only suggested by the simplest of brushstroke.  Her eyes open the "non-conscious lanes" of my psychic space as I interlace with this painting.   I am caressed in an experience of "metramorphosis" as all the traces of the painters hand circulate in my psyche-soul-body-mind filling the space between me and this painting.

This young woman's eyes transfix in her inscriptive gaze.  She beckons: sit longer, sit in the cascading stillness of my ancient soul eyes peering at you from a young face of enjoyed (jouissance) encounters.


I am smiling back at her.  Greeting her smile of whispered life filled with a soul of sights seen and acknowledged across the distance of centuries.

 Excerpted from my forthcoming book:  Inscriptions from The Goldfinch - Ensouling With a Brushstroke