Anatomy of Shadows by Bette Ridgeway
Having Never Been Here Before, You Arrive
Having never been here before, you arrive
at the architect’s complex—
the serpentine
of clean-cut buildings. Handsome, but
they’re all the same. The architect
drives through this tidy maze, then parks.
The clench of the handbrake makes you feel
it is too late
to say, Can we do this another night?
Will you drive me home?
You are not sure you want to leave,
you just want to know
whether or not he will rape you. You disembark.
The architect is at your side, touching
your tensile shoulder.
You wait for him to lead you to a door,
but he points to the sky instead.
The architect traces, Ursa Major, then Ursa Minor.
To look at that mess of stars and see
constellations
takes
a kind of ancient naïvete. You have
a familiar thought, He cannot possibly
be this dense.
The architect continues, Orion the Hunter.
He seems pleased with himself,
which is how you recognize this
as a move, something he has done before
for another girl.
You see a crowd
of bright-but-numb points trapped in
dumb fate.
When you complained of being
frightened of men,
your therapist said, You are
a good judge of character.
You know
who was a good judge of character?
Cassandra. Girl could see the future, too.
And look what happened to her—
rape, murder.
No gift or skill will save you. You feel
you are playing cards with Destiny
or God—whoever is in charge—
I see how many women are raped by men they know
and I raise you
my disregard.
No matter the odds,
you always double down.
The scattered stars like ante,
the apartment doors
patterned, but inscrutable
as another player’s hand.
You shuffle
your feet to still your mind.
I’m cold, you say. Shall we go inside?
About the author:
Eleanor Boudreau’s first book, Earnest, Earnest? (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), won the 2019 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, a Florida Book Award, and was a Finalist for the Medal Provocateur from the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Currently, Boudreau is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of West Alabama.
In the artist’s words:
Bette Ridgeway is best known for her large-scale, luminous poured canvases that push the boundaries of light, color and design. Her youth spent in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York and her extensive global travel have informed her colorful palette. For the past two decades, the high desert light of Santa Fe, NM has fueled Ridgeway’s art practice. Her three decades of mentorship by the acclaimed Abstract Expressionist Paul Jenkins set her on her lifetime journey of non-objective painting on large canvas. She explores the interrelation and change of color in various conditions and on a variety of surfaces. Her artistic foundations in line drawing, watercolor, graphic design, and oils gave way to acrylics, which she found to be more versatile for her layering technique. Ridgeway has spent the last 30 years developing her signature technique, called “layering light,” in which she uses many layers of thin, transparent acrylics on linen and canvas to produce a fluidity and viscosity similar to traditional watercolor. Delving further, Ridgeway expanded her work into 3D, joining paint and resin to aluminum and steel with sculptures of minimal towers.
Ridgeway depicts movement in her work, sometimes kinetic and full of emotion, sometimes bold and masterful, sometimes languid and tentative. She sees herself as the channel, the work comes through her but it is not hers. It goes out into the world – it has a life of its own.
Over four decades Bette Ridgeway has exhibited globally with 80+ prestigious venues, including: Palais Royale, Paris and Embassy of Madagascar. Awards include Top 60 Contemporary Masters and Leonardo DaVinci Prize. Mayo Clinic and Federal Reserve Bank top Ridgeway’s permanent collections. Books include: International Contemporary Masters and 100 Famous Contemporary Artists.