Night Windows

August, 1995
Oils on Paper
26”x 20”‍

Dreaming the dark and the light

The view of the bedroom window of my teenage years with all my nighttime fears and longings – boogie men and possibilities both outside, my stuffed lion Leonard clutched to my chest. The fire siren that haunted my nights – surely it was an air raid this time. The neighbor boy – a sweet childhood relationship twisted by 50’s sexual mores – who my mother caught peeping when I was eleven. The unknown boys that peered in one night much later as I lay pretending to be asleep until they crunched off in the snow.

The calls I ignored – the urge to dance naked in the moonlight and the owls that screeched spooking me also.

What would have happened if I had heeded the call of the owl and the moon those many years ago to dance naked in the moonlight in 1961?

It was always there wasn’t it? The call to wildness. The owls, the moonlight, even the “bad” boys…..It would be almost 40 years before I had the courage to break the rules that bound me: What if someone grabbed me? What if someone saw me?? What would people think???

This painting process, actually, was vital in allowing me to finally finally heed the call. Just yesterday? Ever closer every day.

Written Fall 2006