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title" The Recovery Books"
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BOOK 1:

DRAWINGS FROM RENEWAL

by marko koludrovic

I avoid making statements because I read them later and wince in disbelief that I said something so pretentious and naive. But art is difficult so a short story helps simplify things. The main goal for me in any artistic process is to establish a context which gives it meaning.

This project is a new direction for me as it encompasses so many social interactions which I normally shy away from, preferring the relative safety and isolation of the studio. I have accepted that isolation is dangerous and the enemy of change, and because I have invested so much time and energy in therapy, I can longer afford to hide from myself and still believe change is a positive learning process. To invite renewal, continuity and growth, I need to shift my ideals and celebrate the challenges this site offers.

I see recovery as a spiral with no beginning or end and I want to share this journey with as many people as possible, not just because it’s good for me or I need a big audience, but to nurture seeds of change that can only prosper and grow in an environment of support and mutual acceptance. Thank you!
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I loved Popeye as a kid. From the early black and white mumbles to the last tragic epics of the 60's. My father Serge's fantasy was to live and sail in Popeye's group of misfits; Olive Oyle, Sweet Pea and Bluto would've made fine company. He sent me a tin of spinnach which I promptly threw up. Pain is a form of secrecy. The love I felt for my mother was like this. Intense and monumental but also very sad. When I was 9 I buried a photo of her in a tin in the back yard of a house we shared with an old Polish couple. My sister Valentina was 7 when I was born. She was away for many years living in Melbourne with my father and Bette. She was overwhelmed by her future and swallowed by her past. In 2009 I met a lovely woman from Brazil. She was very kind and took great photos of cacti. I tried to tell her but her eyes said no, not her. Vivid memories persist of Valentina shielding me from the fear that was growling outside our bedroom. She put her hand on my shoulder and we could be children that way.
This early bed picture came from how it felt to be sober after so many drinks for so long. I awoke hitchhiking up the beach on Fraser Island with Patsy Payne who touched me like a light. I've always been fascinated by beds. A small arena where we dream, sleep, cry and read the poem of waking. It was rare to have my own private bed which I shared with an ant who I prayed for but he disappeared into the sheets. Valentina drew this hand I think when she was little. Beds can feel like stone or clouds and it's important to have safety rails and mirrors so we don't fall off. Furniture and windows cried out to change the air we breathed. The windows came in to say goodbye to the bed. Bette loved my dad from the beginning, She was unable to play without him and he was unable to be without her even when he lost his arm stillborn and made pots at the Seaview Hotel. I learned how to love her too late. My mother's name was Ljuba but nobody could say that so she went by Sophie. She was a doctor, an escapee, a fortune teller and a machinist who worked at Pelaco Shirts. Dagwood was impossible for me to ignore but I couldn't love him either. He had no secrets and he knew how to kiss Blondie but for some reason he refused to be a man so every morning he would vanish.
The air of my childhood was so hot that the cats took their skins off to go to the shops to buy ice-cream. I like chocolate but they always returned with boxes of Neopolitan. Divorce was too easy to be true. Sit in the coutroom and then love goes. For Sophie it took 5 years and my dad in a big metal Chrysler to deliver the papers. I knew I wanted to be an artist from a long way away, as soon as it became clear that I couldn't fly which was my first choice. Serge painted bottles of women and baskets of good. High school was my private nightmare with yellow science rooms and ugly men who enjoyed beating the kids with canes. Taking them bye the hand to their stone homes full of garbage and rubber pictures. I want to travel in time and shame these men. I was only in AA for under 2 years of songs and pulpit poems.I thought it was a safe place where we could go to drink in peace.
My strong son Monty came from the mountains to hold a mirror to my eyes. His deep footsteps are still striding and he still waits for me. The morning after Monty was born I looked into his face and saw the jungle. Cool clear skies rang for us then. The canopy saved us from our battles and our wages as I was growing up beside his hilltop view waving from the blue parade too. Loving all the way. This is the plain old-fashioned survival of the unkindest. Being then the first ten years was the hardest of them all and I celebrate every years by making not too much at a time. Too many things to unfold, the parcels from Serge, rhinoceros jeans, pump up white wheel scooters and green canvas waders were larger than possible. Drawing slows my braindrain to a crawl. The edges are crisp and they say the same thing but the beginnings are not friends or vacant cellars. Numbers and letters of the alphabet remind me of how I can make myself so much more vulnerable by removing structure. Numb and number.
A window here looks into a charismatic space. Onto these men who are standing in line waiting for their numbers to come up? Drawing feels like covering my eyes with my hands. I don't often draw from the male model. These vessels and concave spaces make me see a Roman villa. Mosaic floors, porticos and winged phallus. My first struggle with girl was such an incomplete salvation; her face. Only perfect tambourine from her corner she said; No. Her mum and dad said; No. Next I saw her on the street in uniform. I don't recall my father's voice in childhood at all. At home from school seeing pig trotters poking up from a saucepan bubbling to have with horseradish and mustard on white bread. We took mussels my father and me in hessian bags, rough heavy and salty from the bay. A sense that stays with me still of him. In sight of the oil tanks and his ceramic Belgrade.
It was rare but true that after his games Monty would visit my studio to watch, to wait and once to warn me not to swallow nails and the groans he took from my rib because I couldn't laugh. This is a full meal. Of hungry meat above a mattress flying in from St Catherine's Bay. More photo albums of my war-blind twin cousins and their Lucy mothers shaved by the village for her Nazi shame. Valentina's friends were strangers in their early southern Palais. With Jenny in black hose at the pin bar milk ball they danced. Like two trees. My third true father drove me to my mother's birth. She was lucky to have his room and he looked over me for the first few years, pushing and scolding my lazy ways. Vera has a strong voice and I remember her dancing on the long laden tables where Irene and I could see her coloured sandals. She cried at Ljuba's funeral. Can you guess my name and where I'm from? Do you also see my red coat and blue tie? Three buttons hold in my shirt and this hat keeps my eyes for you. It was my Sunday job to polish my father's two-tone shoes which I did with great pride, making sure not to smudge their edges. For two bob my combed new hair like his, swept aside in sticky sugar crusts.
This boy is bent like a metal coathanger. His voice repeats and the grown ups kneel on the road before his lost friends. It's a sad memory but who can say more? This hard street is a corner that kills. Automobiles roar along and stumble. The old green Morris is caught above a hole and the Customline V8 drove us over the Nullabor. The women and girls of course, but men, who are they? And where do they belong? From the Ford bench I saw the hotel bar car park just one more will come. Sophie Ljuba was so beautiful in her sand red suit. Bright vermillion her eyes are shining alone. Her friend Clive stuck bottle tops on his eyes and drove a pink Zephyr! This street was my famous place. As I sat the gutter flew over the road to the other boy who rode his trike with golden syrup. It was unkind of me to be so jealous.



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