STOP, LOOK AND THINK #6

Dear Reader,

This is the sixth blog in my series, which is written to offer another way to experience art. Please give yourself several minutes to do this activity. One of my paintings is below with a set of 3 instructions.

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

1. Here is the painting. STOP and LOOK at it for a few minutes. Stay with the image. Take a few deep breaths and pay attention to your feelings and thoughts. Positive? Negative? A confused mix of emotions? Nothing at all? What’s going on in your gut? Is anything going on you can recognize or relate to?

2. Here are a few facts about my painting: Title: “Like a Death, But Not a Death.” It is oil stick on canvas, 24” by 18” and was created in 2000. This information may or may not verify or affect your first response. My title springs from the story behind its creation. Now that you have some added information, compare your thoughts and feelings to your first response (image only).

3. Here is the story. The poem came first, but weeks later a painting emerged, which I recognized as a visual response to my mother’s description of a recent harrowing event. I remember the calm, fact-driven way in which she told me. Her retelling grew into a poem. The painting, with its blacks, cold reds and blindfolded face, acknowledges the reality of unpredictable violence and blind luck.

At Home with the Possibilities

“Follow me,” she says.
My mother walks through her kitchen
into the hallway, past the fake fireplace
in the perpetually dark living room.

In the brightness of the porch,
she points with her index finger,
then shoves her hand into her pocket,
as if she might bring back the moment.

A neat plywood rectangle replaces
a small windowpane. “I told the fireman
who lives across the street. He put the wood in.”
I follow her eyes to the bullet hole and

have to admire the physics of it all:
a gun fired from a moving vehicle,
the trajectory of the bullet, the angle of entry.
If it had entered five feet away, it would have caught her

turning over in bed or sitting up, staring into the dark.
A car pulls up to the stop sign. The driver glances
at my mother and me. A gull screams overhead,
and we watch him plunge, like a death, but not a death.

This poem appeared in Reciprocity: An Artist’s Book and was reprinted in A Brush with Words: Poems by Judith Ferrara, 2013.