Your son presses against me
his small intelligent body.
I stand beside his crib
as in another dream
you stood among trees hung
with bitten apples
holding out your arms.
The poem goes on to lament the son's inevitable growth and departure from the home. "I wait to see how he will leave me," the speaker says to her husband. "Already on his hand the map appears / as though you carved it there."
I spent a lot of time dwelling with this poem - and I say "with" deliberately, because I lived with it, looked at it, turned it sideways. On the surface, it seems to express a fear of abandonment, of rejection, the son following the father on a path of learned emotional betrayal. In the end, though, I think it is not precisely about that.
The poem is named for the apple trees in the dream. In that context, I feel like the child will depart from the mother as all children depart from their mothers, seeking independence, biting the apple and gaining the knowledge of gods, which separates them from God (or, you know, Mom). This moment of separation is presaged from the womb itself, present in all of us, just like the lines in our hands. The speaker of the poem wants to blame her husband, but her recollection of the iconic apple tree suggests that she knows better. The tree is filled with bitten apples because we all take that journey, and we all taste that fruit.
All of that analysis, I believe, is how I got myself stuck. I wanted to paint something universal, or with mythical resonance, and that is too much of a burden for one canvas in a 30 Day challenge!
Here's what I made, and there an end:
I can see how your slightly long analysis became tough to paint but that aside, I do think the painting itself is really successful! There's so much depth here. The shading is just gorgeous and your visual does tell a story, even if the story doesn't jump right out at us. It's a beauty, Ann.
ReplyDeleteEach painting I see from you gets better and better. The last couple are leaps and bounds beyond where you were at the last painting challenge, and even leaps and bounds beyond the start of this one. It's pretty awesome to see!
I continue to be astounded by what you are doing with color these days! Those apples blow me away, especially given that each one is about the circumference of a pencil! To create a bitten apple from the side with visible teeth marks and an absent curve seems easy enough, but to create a bitten apple from the front, on such a small scale, using only color and rough shapes sounds impossible--but here you have done that very thing! So amazing to me.
ReplyDeleteAnd those clouds are mesmerizing, their soft shiny tops and muddied stormy bottoms. So beautiful!
Finally, the ticket booth is remarkable in its 3-D-ness! The highlights and shadows and tons of details are incredible! And look at that snake! It looks like it is coiled up BEHIND the glass! You have excelled at depth and the relationship between objects like never before. Amazing.
Those are some serious stunner clouds! I was totally going to say "muddied stormy bottoms" (but probably not as well as that Jason guy). They have so much bulk and presence. And different from those colorful, lighter clouds from the other day. (Or weeks ago. I have no idea at this point. Haha.)
ReplyDeleteBeautiful job with the ticket booth. It's very solid like a classic piece of carpentry. And the glass and little sign and bits of tape! Terrific!