Animals Are Passing From Our Lives

It’s wonderful how I jog

on four honed-down ivory toes

my massive buttocks slipping

like oiled parts with each light step.

I’m to market. I can smell

the sour, grooved block, I can smell

the blade that opens the hole

and the pudgy white fingers

that shake out the intestines

like a hankie. In my dreams

the snouts drool on the marble,

suffering children, suffering flies,

suffering the consumers

who won’t meet their steady eyes

for fear they could see. The boy

who drives me along believes

that any moment I’ll fall

on my side and drum my toes

like a typewriter or squeal

and shit like a new housewife

discovering television,

or that I’ll turn like a beast

cleverly to hook his teeth

with my teeth. No. Not this pig.

-Philip Levine

Never wanted a jumpsuit before now. 

[gallery]

Self Portraits of a Declining Brain

William Utermohlen is latest artist to be honored at the GV Art Gallery in London, with an event that has an emotional purpose that is near and dear to the hearts of many. Utermohlen spent the last twelve years of his life battling Alzheimer’s, a degenerative neurological disease that slowly took away his ability to do what he was most passionate about: his art.

At the event, his widow spoke to the many supporters, saying “He died in 2007, but really he was dead long before that. Bill died in 2000, when the disease meant he was no longer able to draw.”

This exhibit is known as William Utermohlen: Artistic decline through Alzheimer’s, as it explores the relationship between Utermohlen’s artwork and the progression and struggle with the disease.

Looking at his pieces as his disease progressed, a clear change is visible. As he slowly lost control over his movements, his composition and techniques changed as he was forced to abandon oils for easier-to-use watercolours and pencils. One thing that did not change throughout time, however, was the sheer mastery and vision displayed by has passion for the content of his pieces. 

His paintings display a rarely seen insight into a mind effected by Alzheimer’s, as his struggle and frustration are imminent. Also changed by the progression of time and the disease were his subjects. He began to focus on self portraits and looming dark doorways in the backgrounds

His widow commented that, “it was as if he knew he was going to a very dark place and he knew he couldn’t do anything about it. By the end he couldn’t even recognise his own paintings… that was the saddest thing”.

Rarely does one get the opportunity to chronicle their own experience with mental decline. Even more rarely do we get to share and observe that troubled journey.

This art is that tale.