Writing a painting – Degas and the ring – poem from a performance

What circles one and binds two?
A ring.
An engagement ring,
a wedding ring.
Hélène was about to be married,
and Degas painted out her ring.
He painted out her engagement ring.
You can see the shadow there,
a ghost ring,
just visible under the surface
beneath layers of paint.
What did Degas mean by painting out the ring?

Did Degas paint out Hélène’s ring
to trap her in her Father’s study,
caught behind his enormous chair
forever waiting for her unseen father.
Degas painted Hélène when she was a child
sitting on her Father’s knee,
the same red hair and pale face.
Perhaps he painted out her ring,
to keep her as a child,
keep her for her father,
no hope of husband, or escape,
just another statue in her father’s collection.

Did Degas paint out Hélène’s ring
because he wanted her hand to move?
He painted over
over painted
until the lines flickered,
and the hand came alive,
fluttering and tapping the back of the chair.
Degas painted out the ring
to make space,
spaces within spaces,
frames within frames.
The frame of the paintings,
the border of the wall,
the edges of the display case,
the lines of the chair.
All the objects seem alive,
and we are unsure what it is we are looking at.
Is it a corridor,
a reflection,
a doorway to another room,
a mirror?
Nothing is as it seems.

 Did Degas paint out Hélène’s ring 

so she would go beyond the limits of her life?
Degas depicted women’s roles
wife and mother,
laundress and ballerina,
mistress, servant,
dutiful daughter.
But Hélène gazes into the distance.
Beneath her composure
she is dreaming,
desiring.
Does she long to travel to the lands of the objects that surround her?
To the China of the wall hanging,
Corot’s Naples,
Egypt
and the statues of Sun God Ra
and Osiris God of fertility?
Degas painted out the ring
to liberate Helene’s desire.

Degas painted out the ring
so Hélène could be free.
Not daughter, wife, or mother,
but woman.
Free to dream,
to travel,
to imagine her own future.
He painted out the ring,
so Hélène could be bold and adventurous,
just like his paintings.

Sally Pomme Clayton July 2011