On Blue

Molecular

My Body will Feed Flowers

The Saint of Open Spaces.

The crow so swift, so close, 

feathers sifting air, scattering thoughts. 

Sunlight,

His gleaming black,

The open space.

This is watercolor and gouache on an acrylic under-painting on wood. It didn't turn out anything like the sketch below but I love it.I'm not sure how the pious, solemn figure fits in with the poem but I did grow up Catholic, and I was going for something iconic so I shouldn't be surprised.

I left my part-time receptionist job to work more at the cafe. It's a good change for me. I absolutely wilt sitting at a desk all day talking to strangers. It does mean that I am hardly ever on the net; not so good for my blog life, but I have to admit, it suits the rest of my life just fine.

Rush Hour on Burnside: from the archives

I am afraid to be all alone here, watching the seagulls float above the swollen, branch-twisting river. The metal, glass, and paved crushing of careers and homes and promises, fading behind me into the silence of wings lifting.

I painted this even before my large tempera paintings, so I’ve been attempting to paint poems for my whole adult life, it’s nice to know there is some consistency to me. I feel like I flit around from one experiment to another without a lot of development. But if I have a common theme then it’s just one really long experiment.

This painting is in acrylic. I lived a few blocks from the Burnside bridge at the time and would walk downtown almost daily. I loved being that close to the river.

Under-painting

I’m starting to think that gesso isn’t my perfect medium for creating layered surfaces. I thinned it with acrylic matte medium, used a thin coat and still the under-painting was too obscured. The next layer took the painting in a whole different direction, literally, as I doubted my sideways text and began to see the words depicted more literally. I believe it will take another drastic turn.

The Last Leaves