I am nature



photo.JPG, originally uploaded by Waltzzz.

This is a triptych created by making three Instagram versions from the same image. On the iPad.

The phrase “I am nature” from Jackson Pollock was going through my mind and was the stimulus for me to continue in my calligraphy mode. I have that sense that my nature is in these sketches, they flow from my hand and get tweaked by my eye.

There is more though. I’m challenging my owns and certainly the genesal concepttion that the tools, are not natural. There is something very organic about the growth of these tools. I’ve watched them evolve over 20 or more years and they have their own identity and nanature, they bring their own character to the party, they might well say “I am nature”.

I’ll post the next two up in a moment.

Bursting…

 


This is the first sketch where I consciously sketched my experience in the ThousandSketches project. Well not sure just how consciously really.

I feel as if I’m bursting once again, but with other things like my writing and work. Having these explosions is both exhilarating and a pain.

Poem and Paintings

I like this poem by David Dominguez.

And I found images of the portrait, and the watermelon paintings as well.

Wedding Portrait

BY DAVID DOMINGUEZ

Yesterday afternoon, I hung a framed print in the living room—
a task that took two head-throbbing hours.
It’s a wedding portrait that we love: Frida and Diego Rivera.
I wonder how two people could consistently hurt each other,
but still feel love so deeply as their bones turned into dust?
Before Frida died, she painted a watermelon still life;
before his death, Diego did too.
I want to believe that those paintings were composed
during parallel moments because of their undying devotion.
If I close my eyes, I can see melon wedges left like
centerpieces except for the slice
Diego put on the table’s corner—
one piece of fruit pecked at by a dove
that passed through a window.
I know that I won’t be building a bookshelf anytime soon
and that the chances of me constructing a roll-top desk
are as slim as me building an Adirondack chair that sits plumb,
but I’m good with the spackle and putty knives in my tool belt.
The knots in my back might not be there
if I had listened to her suggestions,
and I could well have done without two hours of silence
over a few holes in the wall.
But somehow, life has its ways of working things out.
This afternoon, I shut the blinds,
turned off the TV, lights, and phone,
and massaged my wife’s feet to fight off a migraine—
her second one this week despite
the prophylactics and pain killers that we store in the breadbox.
For once, I’d like to experience what she feels:
nausea, blindness, and pain that strike
when the cranial vessels dilate,
fill with blood, leak, and make the brain swell.
Earlier, an MRI triggered the reaction as it mapped her head
with electrical current, gradient magnets, and radio waves
hammering her floundering eyes.
For now, we have our room, the bed frame, and the mattress
where she lies as I knead her toes.
Come nightfall, I hope that we’ll sit in the patio and watch
the breeze stirring the lemon, lime, and orange trees
that I planted along the back fence.
On certain nights, the moon turns our lawn
into green acrylic where we sip Syrah and mint tea
until all we know is the sound
of our breathing among the whispering leaves.

David Dominguez, “Wedding Portrait” from The Ghost of Cesar Chavez. Copyright © 2010 by David Dominguez.  Reprinted by permission of C&R Press.

Source: The Ghost of Caesar Chavez: Poems (C&R Press, 2010)

 


Perhaps this was the portrait:

A sign is enough to suggest a face…

I was looking over my notes from the Matisse exhibition in Brisbane… but this blog, Art Matters – My thoughts on art, life, and whatever… Carol Lee Beckx – had the exact quote I did not quite get right:

“A sign is enough to suggest a face, there is no need to impose eyes and a nose on people…It is important to leave room for the spectator’s reverie.”
and
“My line drawing is the purest and most direct translation of my emotion.”
Henri Matisse 1951