Sawt Falasteen - Judy Schavrien’s New Book ‘There’ll Be No Dying Here’ Collects Decades of Intimate Portraits

Bay Area painter, poet, and psychotherapist Judy Schavrien has released her ninth book, "There’ll Be No Dying Here: Portraits Through Time," a collection that documents the faces she has returned to for decades. The volume features 20 individuals whom Schavrien painted or drew repeatedly over periods spanning more than ten years.

Eighteen of the subjects are professional art models. One is Schavrien’s late partner, Judith Mayer, who sat for the artist before her cancer diagnosis, during chemotherapy, and after treatment ended, across their 20-year relationship. The final subject in the collection is Schavrien herself, presented through a series of self-portraits that span several decades.

The book combines these visual records with prose containing Schavrien’s observations on life and people, drawn from her long experience in the queer community. In a phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter, Schavrien described the sitters as "a special club" who had the privilege of being depicted over many years.

Schavrien stated that the selected works demonstrate an evolution of character through time, but not toward physical decline. She argued that age adds to a face rather than wearing it away, creating what she called "pentimento" and formal power. Reading the electronic copy of the book, which is available online for a limited time, was compared by Schavrien to viewing an intimate family photo album. Each subject appears at different times and in various circumstances, yet retains energy and presence in her portraits.

Schavrien noted that the text in the book is integral to the images rather than merely accompanying them. "I was a poet for about 20 years, and then sort of transitioned into being a painter," she said. "The words in the book are integral. They don’t just accompany the images. They’re copulating with them."

The collection includes portraits of older women, such as Ann, who is in her 80s and has modeled for Schavrien for the last 10 years. Another subject, Barbara, is shown in a 2020 painting wearing a fantastical costume evoking Edith Massey from John Waters films. A later painting depicts Barbara as a self-possessed queen mother.

Schavrien expressed deep respect for the modeling profession, stating, "They’re teaching me all the time. A great model is an artist." After decades of working in oil, pastel, charcoal, and printmaking, she now works primarily digitally on an iPad, drawing models she had previously rendered in pastel. She described this digital work as rubbing old and new techniques together to create sparks, resulting in paintings that are freer, stranger, and more abstract while remaining true to the likeness of the person.

Born in New York City, Schavrien was a graduate student in the 1970s at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. There, she studied with novelist Saul Bellow and New Yorker art critic Harold Rosenberg, and attended lectures by Hannah Arendt. She worked for four decades as a psychotherapist, including extensive work with incest survivors, and co-created two Women’s Spirituality graduate degrees at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

The portraits of Mayer are among Schavrien’s most personal works. The two met around 1995 and were together from approximately 2000 until Mayer’s death in 2023. Throughout her illness, Mayer was active with Breast Cancer Straight Talk, an online community that grew to more than 30,000 women. During this time, Mayer sat for Schavrien through diagnosis, chemotherapy, and after treatment stopped.

Schavrien recalled telling Mayer what Cezanne said to his wife: "Don’t move. Apples don’t." Mayer responded, "Then I’m not your model, I’m your muse," but allowed herself to be painted in all weathers, regardless of her appearance.

Schavrien compared these portraits to Don Bachardy’s drawings of his partner, Christopher Isherwood, as he was dying of prostate cancer. She described the series as a "difficult double self-portrait" where both figures, the caregiver and the cared for, bear her face. The work was painted during the COVID pandemic, a time when caregiving, plague, and the Bay Area’s memory of AIDS converged for her.

"There’ll Be No Dying Here: Portraits Through Time" is 152 pages long. It is available as a $30 paperback and as a free online reading copy for a limited time.

O.Salim--SF-PST