30 Paintings in 30 Days: She Knits (Day 13)

I think I mentioned somewhere that I might stick with the poet Louise Gluck for several days this week, and indeed I have!  Here's a piece inspired by her "Love Poem," and specifically, these lines:

"There is always something to be made of pain.
Your mother knits."

This was deceptively difficult to do.  I went to bed feeling that I had finished and woke up certain that I had not.  This provided a good (and unexpected) opportunity for a partial facial study, too. 

30 Paintings in 30 Days: "Your face among minnows" (Day 12)

Among the poets I love most, the one I understand least well is Louise Gluck, whose words mesmerize and enchant me as effectively as they defy my attempts to pry loose their meanings.  Last night, I opened *The House on Marshland*, and I read "The Pond," which sits right beside one of my favorite poems from the collection, "Gretel in Darkness."  I do not understand "The Pond."  But I loved this:

"Under the ringed moon I can make out
your face swimming among minnows . . ."

That image inspired this canvas, which I created - on impulse - from these four colors, and the colors that can be made by combining these colors: White, Yellow Ochre, Prussian Blue, and Magenta.

30 Paintings in 30 Days: Bluebird (Day 11)

Before this week, it had been many years since I had read anything by Charles Bukowski.  A Facebook friend suggested that I look at "The Bluebird," and as soon as I started reading, I knew I had to make a painting.  (For my part, I swear I have a pair of bluebirds in my heart, courting and canoodling when they can, and when they can't, mourning every sorrow that their love can't heal. If I had not met my husband, there's no telling what I would have done over the course of my life to quell them, silence them, keep them cool and still.)

In honor of Bukowski's struggle, I painted a man instead of a woman.  It wouldn't surprise me if "bluebirds" were the reason that a lot of men drink, and a lot of women, too.

I'm not sure this is an especially strong painting, but there are things about it I like.

30 Paintings in 30 Days: "i saw a princess pass" (Day 10)

I returned to ee cummings for the inspiration for this canvas.  I am really loving this challenge for about 300 reasons, which I should probably document (I just don't want to blather).

Here is my piece:

And here is cumings':

if you like my poems, let them
walk in the evening,a little behind you

then people will say
"Along this road i saw a princess pass
on her way to meet her lover(it was
toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants"

(For me, this is about the way in which the words of an awestruck lover make us regal, ennoble us, render us extraordinary.)

30 Paintings in 30 Days: He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead (Day 9)

Despite studying Yeats for several weeks in college, I had never read Yeats' "He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead" until yesterday, when a Facebook friend asked if I had any plans to do a canvas inspired by it.  I fell in love with the poem instantly.  The basic gist if it is this: "I wish you were dead, because then you would forgive me and stay still, never to storm away from me again."  It's awful and wonderful and altogether human.  What I most love is that it indicts that impulse we have (as human beings) to have our way, to get what we want, no matter the cost to someone else, up to and including death.

The actual text is this:

WERE you but lying cold and dead,

And lights were paling out of the West,

You would come hither, and bend your head,

And I would lay my head on your breast;

And you would murmur tender words,

Forgiving me, because you were dead:

Nor would you rise and hasten away,

Though you have the will of wild birds,

But know your hair was bound and wound

About the stars and moon and sun:

O would, beloved, that you lay

Under the dock-leaves in the ground,

While lights were paling one by one. 

 

I particularly loved the image of her hair being "bound and wound / About the stars and moon and sun."  In my depiction, the sun is "off-screen," as it were, its light reflecting in the red glow emanating from the left side of the painting.  I dressed her in a Victorian burial gown, and I swapped out her hands for "dock-leaves," which is an awful notion, by the way.  In the speaker's imagining, he doesn't see her in a tomb, with a headstone; he simply sees her in the ground, covered by "dock-leaves," which suggests to me that he has (mentally, at least) buried her himself.  

 

I also wanted to make her face blushed and filled with blood and life, to emphasize, of course, that she should not be dead - that this impulse is not love.

 

 

30 Paintings in 30 Days: Annabel Lee (Day 8)

I was a child, and she was a child in this kingdom by the sea.

I think this probably qualifies as my first-ever landscape painting.  I spent more or less all day on it, with a brief break for eating some of my husband's leftover birthday cake.

30 Paintings 30 Days: Whitman (Day 7)

I can't even lie: I have really been enjoying using poems as prompts.  Here is today's canvas, inspired by the first stanza of Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road," which I will summarize like this:

"Forget it. I'm taking to the open road. I will stop hesitating, stop doubting, stop whining; I will supply my own needs and be content where I am, with what I have. I don't need to shoot for the stars. I like the earth. I am still dragging all of my past sins and burdens with me, but that's okay. They are part of me, and I am part of them."  The actual poem is at the bottom.

AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,	5
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.	10
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens;
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go;
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)