Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Birds Wings

Images of the world. Under a chestnut tree with your dog reading Ondaatje, a superb writer, watching for the police lest they catch you unleashed, a musician on a bench who put his book down and lifted his guitar from its case on the ground and began strumming though you are too far to hear, on the pale-striped green and blue fleece blanket with the nylon underside from Vancouver where it's generally wetter though we've had record rains in Toronto this year, sipping a mug of fresh French-press espresso coffee with cream, rocking a little in a camping chair, your iPod nano beside you unused, your hair clipped back, a black camisole and comfortable thin cotton khaki shorts, and such green as this city never sees by mid-Summer, usually the grass has brown patches, unaccompanied by your invited kids who couldn't conceive of anything more boring than sitting on a blanket in the park up the road on a hot sunny day, and you're content amidst these images of your world, the breeze that flutters like birds' wings.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Fragments of Healing

where I am, the edge of oblivion

blank, empty stare

you carry it in the palm of your hand

delicate music-maker, this filler of hours

without art, I couldn't imagine living

blank, empty stare,
its simmering anger boiling at the edges

that I see on your face
I know the edge

come back to those who love you,
love

Friday, July 25, 2008

Almost Finished Painting

PaintingJul25-08_rsz

(28.5"x20.5"; 72.5cmx52cm; oil & watercolour on Waterford paper, click here for larger size & press F11 for full screen)


The women on the right appeared ghostly from a distance.

The greens of Nature and the poppies and marigolds much stronger.

She wondered if that was a statement.

The ocean has turned into green.

She had to put the water back in for depth.

Otherwise she'd be flooded.

Where was he anyhow?

Why were the women always waiting.

They were naked and waiting.

Even she who was born from a seabrush
of sea foam.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Paiting Still in Process, nearing end though...

Painting-Mon-col2

awake in night, sleep soon, hope, embroiled by my painting, get overalls on, go at it again

complexity of colours & figures driving me nuts. ready to throw it out. obsession. unscrew tubes of oil paint, try this, that. mess of reality.

where painting has progressed to, or regressed to.

(click here for larger size, you might need to press F11 if you'd like to see its whole cacophony)

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Mirror of Venus

I am the mirror that I watch my
self in.

Behind the mirror is where I see.

Only ask for the 'freedom to revolt- psychic,
analytic, artistic- a permanent state of questioning,
of transformations, an endless probing of appearances,'
......found on the dustjacket
......of a book by Kristeva,
who wrote about revolt, and love.

Everyone should love wholly once in their life, as
the daughter of fortune knows.

The tenor of love demands it.

Love, illicit, a revolt against the order
of the rest of it.

The amatory moment is poetry, open-ended,
without a story to guide it, what's behind the mirror
where I watch your face.

Venus, Goddess of Love, married to Hephaestus, master craftsman.

Of course love is wedded to art. How else
could it be?

The block was a red clay-baked brick which took two hours to smash. It revealed
itself, heavy, smoldering with beaten passion, betrayals and intrigues, over my heart. Cracks of light appeared that became white-red lava that disintegrated slowly the faster I danced.

When I melted into the mirror, love flowed freely.

Venus, Goddess of Love, but she knew her Ares, Mars, God of Fire and War.

Venus undid her bodice and melted
into his arms.

Illicit. Love.

Sometimes I prefer the quietness
of my own thoughts.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Remembered

Is my art confident? Intensely meditated? Is how deeply I love what will be remembered about me?

Strange questions Lightbrown brings to his biography of Botticelli, who was only remembered by Vasari's Lives of the Artists in what was otherwise five centuries of obscurity.

How odd that it was his paganism which appealed to the fin de siècle who brought his work from the shadows of history.

The barest outline of a life.

Botticelli is his art.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

A Love Affair hits #2 on the Charts

A Love Affair #2 in SoundClick's Poetry Charts?! You guys!!! Thanks. 16 min of too-rich poetry, no music, & a Summer weekend? Blow me away...

(Go here to read the poems, which I pasted into a comment.)

(Yes, I am a little out of place at SoundClick's Poetry section, but I've been posting there for a few years, before they even had a Talk/Poetry section, and it's where I keep my poetry recordings: Aural Pleasure.)

A Pulsing Imagination - Ray Clews' Paintings

A video of some of my late brother Ray's paintings and poems I wrote for them. Direct link: https://youtu.be/V8iZyORoU9E ___