Donnie's reason for calling this The Essential was that it included all the elements which, at the time of its creation (2000) he needed in his art. The boy whose face peers out from the sun, not precisely sunny, but certainly a representation of innocence (oft-repeated by a man and a muse with little innocence intact). The small, elongated rabbits - an early-ish appearance, which in later paintings reached almost Harvey-like (Donnie Darko-like?) proportions. The bats, the foetuses ... and centrally, enduringly ... The Creepy Old Lady.
COL came to a new level of refinement at the time of this painting; I had seen her before in Donnie's astonishing output, but she had always been nothing but a head, always been a putty grey-green, incomplete and disembodied. Here she steps forth fully formed (but for that heart-shaped - mangled? or unfinished? - cranium and the minimal number of digits), dressed in a print which always reminds me of the guy in the Bugs Bunny cartoon who walks up a set of stairs and the pattern of his loud check jacket scrolls by, unmoving, as the man moves up the stairs. Her Chuckie Taylors are astonishingly rendered, as is the mouse. The cats' nose piercings are gleaming and actually creepier by far than the bats and the foetuses.
The Essential is basically a koan, a blacklight poster, the sort of thing you can stare at and either lose yourself in it, or lose it in yourself. Its meticulously colored and twisted knotwork owes as much to Persia as the Celts, Donnie studying these designs assiduously and incorporating them in his - essential - playing-card inspired proportions and compositions. Nothing about it seems strange nor even creepy to me, much as I refer to it as I do (the epithet COL above), and from the first time I saw it I wanted it. It took me years to pay Donnie for it, even at the wildly generous discount he gave me on its price, and I will never forget the gallery showing where I gave him the last money, and took it away with me. When she became mine.
I actually posed for Donnie two times, and he painted me thrice. I have all three - he used me for practice in capturing realistic skin tones at that time he was shifting from painting strictly unrealistic monsters to portraiture and more intimate, but still strange, works. If I could take a good photo of two of these portraits, I may post them some time; one is in black-and-white, and maintains some of the extreme austerity of his pieces before focusing on people and their faces. The second he painted from a polaroid, and though some aspect of the nose and perhaps a somewhat rosebud-ish mouth remind me of "Kelly from (the original) 90210", there's also ... something. Something he definitely captured, of me - at least, at that time (1997 or so I think). The second is my favorite, and is in color, and is the real experimentation with skin tone - and was painted at lightning speed, with no model but one of the photos he'd taken of me when I was actually there. One day he painted the black and white - the next day I came back and he'd painted the color portrait, without my even posing nor being available.
The third portrait, the second I actually sat for, wasn't a sitting but a standing, if I am honest. It is the weakest, and was the one he did "for me" - the one which was a realization of my ideas, not Donnie's own. Its face looks like an ex girlfriend of his, not like me, and its theme is so pompously embarrassing to me now I dare not even repeat it, though I had him spell it out pointblank on the canvas. Poor guy - but he was generous to offer to paint for me to order.
I've had these four works of his for so many years, and three of them may never ever be displayed. For me to hang them would be vain even by my standards, and it is beyond comprehension anyone else on the planet would ever want to. I can't even imagine any time in all the years of our long separation(s) Mr. X. even would want to have them around. And so this artist's work, even if it is "only" practice work, lies hidden in my guest room, not even seen nor remembered for I can't even say how many years.
I used to look at those portraits sometimes, wonder what their fate could be - how they could be seen. And yet, then, what they had to show was only what I was, every day. Dorian Grey's contrarian cousin am I - now that they might show a face nobody can hope to see anymore ... the youth and beauty lie hidden, and the middle-aged broad with decayed vanity issues goes out into the world.
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