Silence and solitude, as great teachers have always advised, open us up to new layers of consciousness. This week the layer I have been in features a cast of animals, each bringing its own meaning and significance. A few days ago I opened the door of my studio and was overwhelmed by the smell of […]
Transcendence
John Walker: I Feel You
Light and Forms, by John Walker (courtesy of Nielsen Gallery) One of Boston’s best galleries, the Nielsen Gallery on Newbury Street, recently featured a retrospective of the work of Boston painter John Walker. Born in England and now director of the graduate school of painting at Boston University, Walker is a major force field in […]
Remembering and Loss
Elatia Harris left a comment here yesterday that is too apropos to not share. Thank you Elatia. I do understand what you’re going through. People our age either know what it is to see their friends dying or they don’t yet know but soon will. Looking back on it all — and, alas, living with […]
The Hiding Places
The intensity of the last week and the death of two friends in such a short period of time have been a strong wind sailing me straight into a setting sun. I haven’t been to my studio for over a week. In spite of deadlines for upcoming shows I am allowing my hands to lie […]
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Olivier Messiaen
Composer Olivier Messiaen As I head to New Jersey to say goodbye to yet another dear friend who has only days to live, the soundtrack in my head is music that speaks to that dimensionality, the one where very little makes logical, rational sense. Olivier Messiaen’s music has held me in its power for most […]
Now That I Have Your Heart by Heart
Song For The Last Act Now that I have your face by heart, I look Less at its features than its darkening frame Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame, Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd’s crook. Beyond, a garden, There, in insolent ease The lead and marble figures watch the show Of […]
Chemical Dance
It is a strange and esoteric chemistry that moves the inner dial of our moods. Who hasn’t taken a micro-second whipsaw ride from ebullience to hopelessness? For me, some days in the studio are all flow. On others, nothing goes right. If only I could clear a pattern headed in the wrong direction as easily […]
Waiting for the Crack
Spring Thaw in South Hadley Old snows locked under glass by last night’s ice storm left curatorial Winter, in whose hands alone we’d hope to find the keys, jangling them in the trees—. not merely in these pine needles by the fistful gloved in crystal, but, from their boughs, the self- invented digits of icicles […]
The Many Worlds View
I’m off to New York for a few days. I want to see the Mannerist drawing show at the Morgan Library, most particularly out of respect for my daughter Kellin who is a Mannerista fanatic now that she is living in Florence. (To read an excerpt from the New York Times review of this show, […]
Elizabeth Bishop’s Last Poem
Sonnet Caught — the bubble in the spirit level, a creature divided; and the compass needle wobbling and wavering, undecided. Freed — the broken thermometer’s mercury running away; and the rainbow-bird from the narrow bevel of the empty mirror, flying wherever it feels like, gay! Elizabeth Bishop And if you are so inclined, here is […]