A new year is drawn but shows
days recently erased still beneath. It’s repentance.
It has a long life. It bleeds
through the new work, day, life
and haunts the wet, freshly painted present.
Picasso’s 1901 Blue Period painting The Blue Room under infrared imaging revealed another portrait underneath the room scene. This pentimento is a bearded man in formal wear wearing a number of rings on his fingers. Did Pablo run out of money for a new canvas, or did he regret what he had painted?
and with soft, scented skin flushed pink
from a beating heart. And she moved.
She spoke, laughed, walked under sky acres.
Then immortalized inadequately in stone or words.
Crafted but cold, stationary, here and gone.
Walking through, you too are on display.
All of us, visitors, observing, studying, interpreting
what we see, trying to find meaning
and connection. I quietly study you studying.
And I pencil sketch our life together.
This is the work of darkness – not
just night – but that other lacking time
when light is unseen. It is chiaroscuro.
Without art. Under an arch of lamentation,
these three days have been midnight unmoving.
Astronomer by Candlelight by Gerrit Dou (Dutch, 1613 – 1675) with a touch of modern technology
We paint, take the photo, record light
changing around us, trying desperately to catch
the moment, hold it for the future,
get a second chance – and always fail.
The moment changed. The artist more changed.
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” ~ Anaïs Nin
More than just dramatic license – the liberty
to deviate from conventional form or fact
to achieve that desired effect, factual distortion,
altering grammar and language with lovely impunity,
and all in the name of art.
Writing the Day 