Posted on: Sunday, February 6, 2005
Artist takes out feelings of anger on canvas
By Victoria Gail-White
Special to The Advertiser
In July 2004, respected Hawai'i artist Lynda Hess was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 44. She confronted the initial shock, learned about herself and is painting those findings into her latest canvases.
Honolulu Academy of Art In the recently published catalog of her work, "Body Language," she writes, "I have come to understand the body as an antenna, our link between the worlds of energy/spirit and matter/flesh. The fascinating part for me is that the visual is a lingua franca in this communication. This is both as helpful and confounding in artistic expression as it is in trying to interpret dreams. Everyone's comprehension is highly personal and grown from experience."
The Advertiser sat down with Hess to talk about how her diagnosis has affected her work, and her understanding of herself as an artist.
Q: How did you find out about the cancer? What course of therapy did you take?
Q: How did your catalog tie in with all this?
A: It came out right before the diagnosis. (Afterward) I had to change my whole mind-set about life. Cancer is really a gift; it gives you great clarity.
I saw the clinic as a religion. You are in the doctor's church, they have the costumes and the declarations and it all makes sense in that world. But by the time I was in my car, driving home, it stopped making sense. I realized it was just a fear-based thing and I couldn't make a good decision based on fear.
Q: Was there a specific painting that spoke to you?
A: Yes, originally I had no intention of the figure in the "Living Water" painting being myself, but it turned out to be. It was the last big piece for an exhibit in Dallas. For some reason, I couldn't paint my breasts in that painting. I had an issue with it; it represented some mental block in my body. In the end, I put a version of my own breasts in there. In retrospect, after that work was completed, I spent the next two months trying to get the doctors not to take my breasts off. It really is a rebirth painting. I have always been curious about the difference between our fate and our choice. Our destiny is set and yet we have free will. Does it have to be one or the other? As an artist you go into an altered consciousness when you are painting. You think you are doing something for a reason at the time, but often you are painting something you are not conscious of.
Q: You have exhibited in the Artists of Hawaii show at the Honolulu Academy of Arts nine times since 1987, and in 2004 you won the Director's Choice Award for your large oil-on-canvas painting, "Anger." How did that feel? How did people respond to that painting?
A: I was really surprised. The amazing thing was that the cash award matched my deductible at the clinic. Everything fit into place. I like the Artists of Hawaii show because it is completely uncensored, and one of the few places that I can show my work.
You know, people bring themselves to my work. It may be difficult for them to look at it if I hit a nerve. The ongoing struggle for me is to say what I want to say. I am never going to have control over other people and what they think. I have to stay true to what I think.
Q: Was "Anger" autobiographical for you?
A: Not initially. I got ideas for that painting from watching how an abusive family related to each other. It seems to me that the routes of anger, guilt, grief and depression are all the same. I thought the figure of Medusa was a great metaphor for how anger affects us — it scares and intimidates people. Most people don't want to deal with it and females have fewer outlets. I was taught not to let the anger out. We think it isn't manifesting itself, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. It affects us — more than anyone else — and that is why the mirror is so important in that painting, it's heart-shaped. I knew as the process unfolded that the painting had something to tell me. Anger is a great tool. When you see what makes you angry, those are the areas to look at. You have to look at yourself and look at yourself with love. I realized not too long after it was in the show that it could have been titled "Anger/Fear/Guilt." It is all the same thing.
Q: Is there a reason that you choose to paint exclusively with oil paints?
A: I am a slow painter and oils are slow. I don't need things to dry instantly.
They have a depth of color and I like the range from transparency to a thick opaqueness and the fact that you can paint over things.
Q: Your paintings tend to be very large. Do you think that makes a difference in your work?
A: I work in a large format because I am blessed with the situation I am working in, a large studio. Actually, some of my work really needs to be big. "Garden Variety Goddess" is an iconic figure, 14 feet tall. We relate differently to different-sized work. Because I am talking about bodies and our own physicality, there is an important relation between the work and the way you perceive it. The size, like in the frescoes in Italy, brings you into the physical realm with the work. It is a tool.
Q: What are you working on now? A: I am working on the second of two paintings about my changing body. The first one was about all the bad things and the second is all the good things. I have found that really being honest about my Great Breast Cancer Adventure has motivated others.
Breast cancer has given me a different relationship, a more personal perspective of the world. It is such an amazing thing to have because it brings up all the issues — social, spiritual, emotional, physical and mental.
I think we all need to look at breast cancer symbolically and why there is so much of it in our society. I am also interested in finding a show with artists that use their art specifically for healing.
Lynda Hess' catalog "Body Language" is available at The Contemporary Museum gift shop.
Hess perceives many of her pre-diagnosis paintings as signposts — her body trying to send messages.
"Anger," an oil-on-canvas painting by Lynda Hess, won the Director's Choice Award in 2004 at the Artists of Hawaii show at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. She said that "anger is a great tool" in the painting process.
A: In a routine mammogram. I had no symptoms and nothing that could be felt or seen, but something showed up on the mammogram. The biopsy confirmed that the cells were atypical and the doctor performed a lumpectomy. That's when they found the cancer. On my own, I also chose to work with alternative medicines as well as the surgery and did not undergo any chemotherapy or radiation. Everybody had opinions about what I should do. I only took advice from people I really trusted. I really needed to lock myself away from too much input and focus on what it meant to me. That's what I did; it was more of an internal thing. When they did the second surgery, they took a lot of breast tissue but they didn't find any cancer cells. For me, that was a big vindication of what I believe in.
Lynda Hess
