This is a pencil sketch of Tony winner and five time Emmy nominee Blair Brown that I put through a watercolor filter. It's based on a glamour shot she did about 25 years ago. She deserves so much more but all my art supplies are packed away except for my red pencil and my blue pencil.
During my time in New York, which is rapidly winding down, I've had the pleasure of seeing Blair on stage four times and meeting her briefly on two occasions. I enjoyed her in all of the plays, but her heartbreaking work in the musical "James Joyce's The Dead" was particularly memorable.
When I was in Costa Rica in 1990 I had an intense dream about Blair Brown that seemed to play out in real life a few days later.
In the dream I was in Central Park in New York with Blair. Someone tried to accost her and we wound up in a decrepit old police station filling out a report with an officer who typed our story on an old manual typewriter. The office couldn't get her name right and kept calling her Molly Dodd. Blair tried in vain to explain that she was an actress and that Molly Dodd was just a character she played, not her real name.
A few days later I'm walking near Parque Central (yes, that's Spanish for Central Park) in downtown San Jose with my friend Ellen and her three year old son Michael (who is now a handsome and funny young man) when Ellen is spooked by two women who she thinks are following us and worries that they may try to snatch Michael.
We ditch the women and head into the park to collect ourselves. Ellen looks through her bag and realizes her wallet has been stolen. The next day we find ourselves in a decrepit old police station, I sort of remember it being in the lower level of a building, very dark like a basement.
A police officer takes Ellen's story down on an old manual typewriter. The officer has a hard time understanding why Ellen had two different last names. Ellen tries in vain to explain that she is an actress and her professional name is Ellen Kaplan but her married/legal name is Ellen Feder. The concept seems completely foreign to the officer but I think it sinks in eventually.
I'm not saying my dream (which also had Blair in a bright pink party dress talking about her pony pal Pokey) was prophecy exactly, but I couldn't help but see the similarities. And it's made all of my future dreams feel a little more real.
Anyway, Happy Birthday to the incredible and dreamy Blair Brown!
[Note: it's also Judy Davis's birthday but I've already drawn her at least 3 times so she gets a pass this year.]
No comments:
Post a Comment