STOP, LOOK AND THINK #4

Dear Reader,

This is the fourth blog in my “looking at art” series, 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. Remember that there are no right or wrong responses, so it can be a win-win experience.

1. Here is the painting. STOP and LOOK at it for a few minutes. Stay with the image before scrolling down to step 2. Take a few deep breaths and pay attention to your feelings. Positive? Negative? A confused mix of emotions? Nothing at all? What’s going on in your gut?

2. Some basic facts about my painting: Title: “Twig and Cone.” It is mixed media on board, 16” by 20,” created in 2002. This information may or may not verify or affect your first response. My title allows you to edge into my world and has specific meaning for me, because there is a story behind it which is unknown to you. Before scrolling down to step 3, THINK about your first response (image only) and compare it to your feelings. Put the basic information you have and relate it to the image.

3. Here is the story. While sitting on a porch in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, I spied something caught in the branch of a tree - a twig and pinecone were linked together in what looked like a man hanging. I asked my husband, John Gaumond, to get his camera. I knew it would be at least a week before I would be able to enlarge and transfer his photograph into a painting. The juxtaposition of an idyllic Cape Cod summer setting with an impromptu reminder of a lynching supplied the core energy to begin a poem. I sat on the porch in sight of the hanging man and worked on the first drafts. A month later, the Smithsonian magazine published an article about journalist Ida B. Wells, a civil rights activist born in 1862 who worked to end the practice of lynching in the United States (“Against All Odds,” Clarissa Myrick-Harris, July 2002). I dedicated the poem to her.


Articulation