“As I grow older, I become increasingly aware of how small a ripple even the best of us leave behind, and how inescapably lonely a life is at the most important points.
Why does life provide for me so many more sharp pains than sharp joys?”
– jakl 1973
The Artist
Jaime Lass
Jaime Lass was born in New York City, and trained at Pratt Institute. She wanted to study fine art, but her mother wouldn’t let her (because it was ‘of no use to anybody’), and insisted she study commercial art. But this gave her in the end precisely what she wanted: a sound technical training with an emphasis on draftsmanship. On leaving Pratt she put her career aside and worked as a bluegrass and folk singer and guitarist, weaver and textile designer (late 50s-60s). From the late 60s on she became increasingly involved in animal welfare, both in the US and in Edinburgh, and in the 70s co-founded Lothian Cat Rescue, a massive shelter south of Edinburgh and still going. She also published a self-illustrated vegetarian cookbook (The happy herbivore, Edinburgh, Canongate 1979), which still turns up at Amazon. But she continued to draw and paint seriously for her own pleasure (only one work from that period survives and opens this collection). In 1957 she married Roger Lass, now an honorary professorial fellow at the universities of Cape Town and Edinburgh.
Paintings & Drawings
Commentary
These notes are rather like the explanatory labels you find in museum galleries, though with some personal commentary too. They provide context for pictures that need it: for instance, identifying quotations in titles, allusions to other pictures, place names that might be unfamiliar, or telling things unknown except to anyone except the artist and her close circle or even just me, but which might help interpreting what are often strange and enigmatic works.
Tribute
For Jaime
Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht,
soll mein sehnliches Verlangen
freundlich die gestirnte Nacht
wie ein müdes Kind empfangen.
Hände, laßt von allem Tun,
Stirn, vergiß du alles Denken,
alle meine Sinne nun
wollen sich in Schlummer senken.
Und die Seele unbewacht
will in freien Flügen schweben,
um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
tief und tausendfach zu leben.