STOP, LOOK AND THINK #9

Dear Reader,

This is the ninth blog in a series written to offer another way to experience art. Try to give yourself several minutes to do this activity. One of my paintings is below, followed by a set of instructions.

1. STOP, LOOK AND THINK before you scroll down to each section. There are no right or wrong responses.

2. Here are a few facts about my painting: Title: “Wings” - Medium: acrylic on canvas, 24” by 24” - Created in 2000. This information may or may not verify or affect your first response. Now that you have some added information, compare your thoughts and feelings to your first response (image only). Is there anything about the title and painting that clicks?

3. Here’s the story, followed by the poem, “Wings.” An open-ended painting assignment given by Nan Hass Feldman during a class at the Worcester Art Museum inspired this painting. The theme for the session was Primitive and Archetypal Imagery. After seeing “examples [of work] by Jean Dubuffet, Joan Miró, and Karel Appel…[we were to] pick a subject, concept or emotion and explore [our] own primitive responses.” The word “archetype” made me begin to paint an angel. However, it was his nonplussed and annoyed expression that made me need to write about him. He wouldn’t let me rest until I told his story. I started to draft the poem using the abecedarian form (interview with Robert Pinsky, Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft by Bill Moyers). Using the order of the alphabet, I began each line or work and drafted a 27-line poem. What remains of the form in the final draft are 4 lines in the last stanza.

Wings

Am I dreaming?
For six nights, they grew
In sections along my spine.

Bogged down by their weight,
Confounded by their color,
I fly on my back among jittery stars.

Heaven sent?
I don’t believe it.
Consider my transformation:
Escort to Kafkaesque killers,
Lackadaisical liars, mudslingers,
Gunslingers, necromancers
On their way to perdition.

You sleep while I topple them,
Tumble with them
Until they are sealed in tombs and
Vanquished.

Wings. Webbed. Lacy.
X on my back forever,
Yoke of solitude, flying me through
Zones of history repeating itself.
If my mother could see me now.

Image and poem: “Wings” appeared in Reciprocity: An Artist’s Book. Poem: “Wings” appeared in A Brush With Words, Autumn Light Press, 2013.