Judy JES Schavrien

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The image on display: HECUBA PROTESTS THE RAVAGES OF WAR. "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, / That he should weep for her?” So says Hamlet as he witnesses an actor moved to tears by reciting Hecuba’s fate. The same might be said of the other characters in my scroll series, BEYOND WAR--MONARCHS, PROPHETS AND PROTESTERS. Why raise from the dead Queen Hecuba, who lost everything at Troy, or Oedipus, Odysseus, and Sappho for that matter? Why should we care? Amidst the “endless war” waged by an imperialist Athens, Hecuba, a voice from the Greek's history, achieved a certain fame and infamy for her anti-war protest. She was the kind of collateral damage we witness during our own newscasts today, and back then her diatribe from the stage was its own newscast. As to figures like Oedipus and Helen, or Odysseus, the veteran who takes the long way home from war, my view is that I’m not so much resurrecting these figures as seeding them from the Collective Unconscious, where they continue to dwell and haunt. I portray mainly faces and torsos. They are often, especially for this scroll series, gender-variant, as befits these reports from the Greek front lines.

My obsession with the face one interviewer attributed to what happened on my 40th birthday. In a mugging, I was shot in the face. But I’d add that the close observing of faces began earlier. As a psychotherapist, I’ve watched and cherished for decades--faces in motion, faces in emotion.

As to the esthetic of this series: I use Asian papers, xuan, kozo, unryu. I lay the ground using a mop and Sumi ink—swishes and splashes. Then scar the scrolls with intense strokes and erasures. Like Hecuba and her world, the scrolls are time-worn, war-torn and bent on surviving. I have been nominated as Oakland Artist of the Year, have won 18 prizes in the arts, and published 4 books, including Shot Awake—A Painter’s Memoir. My art is featured in cover articles of international journals. In my psychotherapy practice, I have specialized in people suffering from post-trauma stress or, with luck and courage, emerging into post-trauma growth.
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