A Grief Observed: The Paintings of Ellen Berman

j^A Grief Observed: The Paintings of Ellen Berman Faith McLellan When you look at an Ellen Berman painting, Ellen Berman looks right back. Clear. Direct. Straight-on. Those who live with disabled persons attest to tiring quickly of the sentimentality with which some people regard handicaps. When you don't have to live with it, it's easy to explain that misfortune in a variety of ways: some wise Providence has singled out certain individuals for an experience that will make them better persons; or they have talents that lend themselves to bringing up a disabled child; or the handicapped child is a holy gift, marked by a special kind of purity. The same spirit that manufactures these explanations just as bUthely glosses over other considerations of Uving with disability: the pervasive difficulties of daily life, the sense of loss that never completely goes away, and, conversely, the realization that a life assumed to be limited can, in its own way, be full and richly textured. The genius of Ellen Berman's paintings is that she manages to capture these and other complexities, the layers of feeling that surround the experience of raising a handicapped child. She offers an intensely personal experience not by sanding down the rough edges of her unique situation, but by embracing its difficulty, pain, and joy in clear, direct ways, mainly through the very particular representation of herself and her daughter, Sarah. Sarah Berman, who died unexpectedly in 1990 at the age of seventeen , was multiply handicapped, severely mentally retarded, and suffered from a seizure disorder. During her life she never spoke, although she was far from silent. She communicated through sign language and by her frequent and infectious laugh. Ellen Berman came to painting relatively late. She taught EngUsh before pursuing an interest in watercolor at the Glassell School of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. One course, however, soon gave way to two and three and four, and she finally gave up teaching and went Literature and Medicine 12, no. 2 (Fall 1993) 235-237 © 1993 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 236 THE PAINTINGS OF ELLEN BERMAN to art school full time. She caught fire from a gifted teacher, Dick Wray, who supported and encouraged her efforts. PhiUp Pearlstein and Frida Kahlo also became important influences. Though she despairs of the current commercialization of Kahlo, Kahlo's use of her own body and face as her primary image was a revelation for Berman: "that was my permission." She has had several shows of her paintings, and her work is now represented by Houston's McMurtrey Gallery and the Edith Baker Gallery in DaUas. From the very beginning of Berman's life as a painter, Sarah was her obsessive subject. She remarks that the importance of the story she had to tell made up for "lost time." The first painting on these pages, Sarah and I (and the Gulf of Mexico), revealed, both to Berman and to the world, the artist's deep knowledge of her subject. The first image embodies that intensity and speaks to her vulnerabiUty and the protectiveness she felt toward her daughter. The need to defend and to deflect is there; but so is the need to be known—to be truly known as particular persons. The mother envelops the daughter, but both are fully engaged with the viewer. They gaze steadily out of the painting, with a fierceness that comprises exposure, curiosity, and strength. They are inseparable for a time, once drawn close in a vaguely Pietà -Uke embrace (Big Girl), later removed, yet still holding hands in front of a family chair (Granny's Chair). The mother is always naked, stripped and vulnerable, open to a continual grief. Sarah meets the viewer's eyes; those who would avert their gaze from her in life must meet her on the canvas on her terms—directly. Although the hierarchical ordering of the real world labels her, proclaiming her self less than most other selves, in these paintings she is free, free to be shown as a person of value and accomplishments in her own right. Her mother enfolds her, or grasps her hand, but only sometimes. For there...