The Voices in My Head - Part VIII
I’m not schizophrenic, but sometimes I hear voices. They’re not loud, but they’re assertive and are really part of a tide of knowingness that I’ve experienced at different times in my life. So when I woke to a voice that told me I was to spend my next birthday in Santa Fe taking Ayahuasca, I wasn’t surprised.
THIS IS PART 8 of an EIGHT-PART STORY
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
Image: Nicole in her studio (2021)
The day after the workshop I went out and bought $400 worth of art supplies. That was seventeen years ago. I knew my goal was to eventually paint portraits but it was a long skip, hop and jump from where I was at that point to where I wanted to be. In the first year, I filled half a dozen sketch pads with smudgy drawings of people I made sit for me. I was good at resemblances, and in a way that made sense: if you drew someone it was a little like writing a story about them.
I gave myself a year and worked like a dog. I figured if I got good at drawing, I could one day move on to oil paint, which was my goal.
And so I drew and drew and drew to the point where I damaged my wrist, and still I heard my mother’s voice in my ear: Keep moving that hand!
Needing a place to work, I rented a studio in a warehouse filled with artists on Austin’s east side. A year later, I built my own studio in the tree-filled yard behind my house, a place that became a magical sanctuary for me and the people who came to visit and have their portraits painted.
Nicole and her studio mate, Lucille, in front of her studio
In the years since, I’ve painted dozens of portraits, some of them commissions, some of them people whose faces interested me. I’ve had no regrets. I’ve taken classes, studied with some fantastic painters, honed my skills.
Images of Nicole’s earlier paintings 2009-2011, from left to right - Top: Big Al, Girl with Red Hair, Leslie Cochran | Bottom: Suzanne, Craig, Arden in Dress
Now I’m at the point where I can take my time, pick and choose projects. Because of arthritis in my wrists, my focus in the past year or two has been on drawing – spot illustration – rather than painting. This has been very gratifying to me. I’ve managed to produce portraits in graphite and colored pencil that are every bit as exciting to me as portraits in oil. And so I continue with my process of capturing an image on paper, and if it’s a politician or someone controversial or well known, writing about them. I no longer hear my mother’s voice in my head, egging me on. Perhaps I’m doing something right.