Memory and Dream

Two Hearts as One, Forever Dancing

Two figures, holding hands, dominate the field.

The young woman on the right has a bird’s-nest mane of red-gold hair cascading past her shoulders. Her solemn grey gaze is on her companion, her head tilted slightly, her smile accentuated by the thickness of her lower lip. Her nose seems a touch large for her features, ears standing out a little too far, but the overall impression one receives is of a luminous beauty. She has a rainbow array of Indian printpatches on her jeans and is wearing a tie-dyed top under a jacket adorned with a ragtag assortment of scarves. In her free hand she is holding a small hardcover book out of which sticks a fountain pen, as though to mark her place.

The young woman on the left is smaller, almost a shadow of the other with her dark hair and bohemian blacks—T-shirt, jeans, sweater and scarf. She is smiling as well, but her dark eyes look out of the painting, directly engaging the viewer. She has a paintbrush tucked away behind one small, neat ear and in her free hand she holds a watercolor paint box and a spiral-bound sketchbook, the pages of which are wavy and swollen from many dried washes.

They are standing on a headland overlooking a lake, the meadows around them running riot with sweeps of goldenrod and wild asters. The landscape on a whole has been only vaguely detailed. It has a soft, hazy, almost sfumato quality about it, lending a dreaminess to the setting that should logically be at odds with the sharply focused rendering of the two figures. But such is not the case. By virtue of her use of broken color throughout, combined with a light feathering technique that is particularly effective in the two figures, the artist has integrated figures and background to a remarkable degree.

There is something at once innocent and sensual in how the two young women are standing, joined together by the clasp of their hands. One senses a great affection between the two. A study of photographs taken when the artist was in her twenties reveals that she has used herself and longtime friend, the late author Katharine Mully, as models for this piece. Considering the recent publication by the East Street Press of an omnibus of Mully’s stories illustrated by the artist, the significance of their joined clasp and what each holds in her free hand seems most apropos.

Two Hearts as One, Forever Dancing, 1993, oil on canvas, 40 X 30 inches. Collection of the artist.