There are many books out there about how to treat pain. The Colorful Art of Pain is different. It does not give any quick fix remedies or cures for pain. What it does is show you pain through the eyes of an artist. Daniel Quinlan was hooked on painkillers that were becoming less and less effective. He had battled with chronic pain for many years. When he and his wife moved to Tanzania in East Africa he decided to stop all pain medication and use painting as a way to get release from his pain. When he ran out of brushes he started using his fingers. In the space of 3 years he painted 125 large canvases with his fingers until he was forced to stop when his fingers became so raw and swollen he could no longer move them. Beautifully narrated by Cindy Vine and original artwork by Daniel Quinlan, The Colorful Art of Pain is a visual diary that tells you one man's journey to the Hell of Pain.
The presentation of bodies in pain has been a major concern in Western art since the time of the Greeks. The Christian tradition is closely entwined with such themes, from the central images of the Passion to the representations of bloody martyrdoms. The remnants of this tradition are evident in contemporary images from Abu Ghraib. In the last forty years, the body in pain has also emerged as a recurring theme in performance art. Recently, authors such as Elaine Scarry, Susan Sontag, and Giorgio Agamben have written about these themes. The scholars in this volume add to the discussion, analyzing representations of pain in art and the media. Their essays are firmly anchored on consideration of the images, not on whatever actual pain the subjects suffered. At issue is representation, before and often apart from events in the world. Part One concerns practices in which the appearance of pain is understood as expressive. Topics discussed include the strange dynamics of faked pain and real pain, contemporary performance art, international photojournalism, surrealism, and Renaissance and Baroque art. Part Two concerns representations that cannot be readily assigned to that genealogy: the Chinese form of execution known as lingchi (popularly the "death of a thousand cuts"), whippings in the Belgian Congo, American lynching photographs, Boer War concentration camp photographs, and recent American capital punishment. These examples do not comprise a single alternate genealogy, but are united by the absence of an intention to represent pain. The book concludes with a roundtable discussion, where the authors discuss the ethical implications of viewing such images.
Poetry. Art. Essays. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies. In an era of highly curated personas and unrealistic self-expectation, Kellie Richardson offers readers a stunningly honest account of her struggles with identity, relationships, mental health and self-love. THE ART OF NAMING MY PAIN collects Richardson's poetry, essays and art as she navigates what it is for a Black, queer, broken woman to seek joy in a world that says she doesn't deserve it. This book is an unfolding of her journey, bearing witness to the possibility of life after self-loathing. Richardson's voice is refreshingly candid in this sophomore collection, shedding light on issues we all face, though few have the courage to own in the public sphere.
The Reverend Howard Finster was twenty feet tall, suspended in darkness. Or so he appeared in the documentary film that introduced a teenaged Greg Bottoms to the renowned outsider artist whose death would help inspire him, fourteen years later, to travel the country. Beginning in Georgia with a trip to Finster's famous Paradise Gardens, his jour...
Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color . . . A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists. Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.
Learn to see and mix any color with extraordinary precision! Many painters don't paint what they see, but what they expect to see, what they think they see, what they remember, or what they imagine things are supposed to look like. Since "the mind stands in the way of the eye," the purpose of this revolutionary book is to train you to paint what your eye actually sees. Arthur Stern claims that color is key to painting what you see. After working with three generations of students, he developed a program of 22 painting projects that teach the artist to observe, identify, mix, match, and paint the colors of the world with remarkable accuracy. Using a painting knife and oil paint, you learn to analyze every painting subject as a series of distinct color areas—called color spots—and place each spot on the canvas as a unique and vivid mixture. The fundamental lesson of the book is that if you put the right color spot in the right place, you create a realistic image of form, space, surface texture, atmosphere, light, and shade. As you follow the painting projects in this book, you'll make the dramatic discovery that everything in nature is filled with luminous color. You'll learn to see glowing color in the "blackest" shadow and the "whitest" linen. You'll learn when a green can appear red; how to use paint to replicate metal, glass, wood, paper, porcelain, and other opaque, transparent, or textured surfaces. Before long, you'll be seeing a multitude of colors in a slice of bread, apples and oranges, and a mass of green leaves. You'll learn how to paint quickly enough to capture a "live" still life—a flower that moves and slowly dies as you paint it. You'll even practice with a setup outdoors to see how sunlight and skylight affect color. How to See Color and Paint It is a must for beginners and a valuable asset for intermediate artists who want to develop a more subtle perception of color. A final section contains beautiful paintings of many subjects that have grown out of projects and ideas taught in this book. 130 color plates; 40 black & white illustrations
A step-by-step program shows readers how to survive any trauma--illness, retirement, violence, death, or divorce--using the author's work in nonverbal imagistic therapy and split-brain research to heal the mind and body during periods of intense anxiety and stress. Original.
Fiction. Lucia Berlin was born in Alaska, raised in Chili, and presently lives and works in California. Her stories have appeared in The Noble Savage, The Critic, The Atlantic, The London Strand, and Quilt, and many other magazines and journals. This is her second volume of short stories.
