Step On His Head
inspired by James Laughlin
Let's step on daddy's head shout
the children my dear children as
we walk in the country on a sunny
summer day my shadow bobs dark on
the road as we walk and they jump
on its head and my love of them
fills me all full of soft feelings
now I duck with my head so they'll
miss when they jump they screech
with delight and I moan oh you're
hurting you're hurting me stop
they jump all the harder and love
fills the whole road but I see it run
on through the years and I know
how some day they must jump when
it won't be this shadow but really
my head (as I stepped on my own
father's head) it will hurt really
hurt and I wonder if then I will
have love enough will I have love
enough when it's not just a game?
Painting and time-based media
Althea BW
altheabartz@gmail.com
Commissions open by DM or email
Althea Bartz-Willis' work examines the relationship between ecological processes—devastation and rebirth—and human coping mechanisms, both psychological and embodied. Each work investigates the threshold between what protects us and what we're forced to confront beneath it. Informed by her fieldwork in ecological research and a childhood spent outdoors, her paintings employ layers and veils to create temporal space as the viewer progresses toward the base layer of canvas.
Building from a blank plane of canvas, Bartz-Willis layers acrylic gesso in thick, organic patches, oil paint, glazing, thread, and textiles. Material vulnerability is enacted through the burning and ripping of fabric, or the scraping away of paint. She asks the viewer to feel rather than think—to sit with how deeply shared these processes of rupture and repair are across all living things.