I took this portrait of Maria this morning on Macmillan Road.
Maria gets her clothes two ways: she buys them in thrift and consignment shops, the only kind of shopping she ever does or enjoys. Or she steals clothes from me. This was my Tillley Hat, I started wearing a baseball cap this summer, Maria suddenly announced she was borrowing it (I do have three) as she has my undershirts, nightshirts, socks and shirts.
She is a believer in communal property. Although I love to joke that Maria is a shrimp – she weights less than half of me – the truth is she is a large presence and a strong woman. Looking at this portrait this morning, I did not see Maria, but an independent, poised and confident woman coming of age, living her life.
They say women age better than men, and in this case, this is true. Maria is younger than I am, when I think of her, I see a presence that has grown and grown since I met her seven or eight years ago.
When I took this portrait, something mystical happened. It wasn’t of Maria, it was of a woman in a hat, a strong women at peace with herself, standing comfortably in her own shoes.
That was not always so. Maria seemed broken to me when I met her, anxious and shy and somewhat beaten down. She did not dare to be herself, she had no confidence in herself, she told me her work was really nothing. That has changed, and although our relationship had something to with it – she transformed me as well – I really had almost nothing to do with it.
Maria had given up on her art, and the spark was flickering inside of her. When she returned to her art, she returned to her life, the spark to her eyes, the color to her cheeks, she grew taller and seemed straighter, her voice clearer and louder. She has been on the move ever since, as liberated people often are.
Maria was ready to come our of her carapace, she found what she needed, and so she has come out of that shell. Humans can dissemble but the camera does not lie, you can see the strength in her eyes and in her own confident and distinctive sense of style.
A woman in town stopped me in the street the other day to tell me how much she admired Maria’s style, the way she dresses, her fierce individuality.
Thanks, I said, but I can sense a lot of women would uncomfortable dressing in that way, so many different colors, combinations.
Yes, she said, smiling, and taking my arm. It means she is not afraid.
It was a good answer.
When I look at this portrait, I think of the way the author and feminist thinker C.Joy Bell describes a strong woman, it speaks to my own love of strong women, and of my wife:
“I believe in strong women. I believe in the women who is able to stand up for herself. I believe in the woman who doesn’t need to hide behind her husband’s back. I believe that if you have problems, as a woman you deal with them, you don’t play victim, you don’t make yourself look pitiful, you don’t point fingers. You stand and you deal. You face the world with a head held high and you carry the universe in your heart.”
That is the woman in this portrait, a strong woman coming of age, stepping into herself; my wife and partner. She is the curator of my portrait show in September, she says she doesn’t want a portrait of her in the show. We’ll see, I can sometimes be a strong man. I’d like to put this one up on the wall of the Round House Cafe.