The NY Times has a great article on the painter Cordula Volkening, a woman with a paintbrush and “nothing to lose” (as she says). Cordula was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2007, and given three months of live. Her response: “I stay in the moment – it’s keeping me sane” – and she paints, in fact has recently had three shows.
Cordula Volkening
(title unknown)
The NY Times also has a slideshow of some of her works. And the photographer Stefan Falke has reported on one of her shows on his blog Stefan Falke’s Eye.
I’m especially interested in Cordula’s comment that her paintings in the past had been more “intellectual pursuit” – far different from the energetic, spontaneous outpourings we see here. And that firm evidence of the impending end of our earthly existence can propel us psychologically from the Apollonian to the Dionysian. Is it reading too much into her painting (above) to see such a polarity and progression, Dionysus riding off on his steed? (Dionysus was associated with centaurs, liminal beings half man, half horse.)
