Friday, February 16, 2024

Worth noting: The plot thickens


This Mary Evelyn Harju portrait of me was painted in late 2006, into 2007. I have now used it as the cover image for PICC. Worth noting: the way I take it, it's not exactly completely an affectionate portrait. The drab coloration, misshapen quality of my head and my hair, were deliberate on Mary's part. As, also, is the sense that my face, as it is painted here, is a little off. If you look closely at it, it is easy to discern that what you are seeing is my face, melded with Abby Heller-Burnham's face. Mary seems to be expressing a certain amount of righteous indignation that Abby and I, by then, had consummated an affair too. Even after I broke up with Mary at the end of '03, I was supposed to know that Abby was off-limits. And, as is generally known, Mary and I did reunite for a big chunk of 2007. So my sense of reuniting with Mary was not thrown off. But important that Mary seemed to see Abby and I together as demonic, or at least menacing. All the elements of the painting which could seem peculiar are no accident.

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