Art
(Marble statue of a Wounded Amazon)
Limestone Lady
Oh, sweet lady made of stone,
Look down on me from up on your pedestal.
Beautiful woman of gravel, grey undertones,
Where did the other half of your face go?
Oh little limestone lady,
Sing me a sweet song,
Help me forget what I have seen
With the story of your missing eyes.
Why would the rain dig these craters in your skin?
Was beating your beautiful face cathartic for the crying skies?
Oh faceless woman,
I am convinced you were lovely long ago.
Before you were marred by acid,
Before your flesh was picked and pulled revealing dark spots and bone.
People must have stopped to stare
To admire the delicately carved folds in your skirt and polished imperfections in your skin.
Oh withering woman,
You were once the image of life, with the gentle curves of Eve,
You were a symbol for lust.
How long before none of you is left?
How much more can be melted down and chipped away,
Before you are nothing more than dust?
Elderly Man in the Sun by Marià Fortuny
Thin, wrinkled skin and protruding bones,
Glassy eyes,
Thin, knobby, fingers
Grasping empty air
Clenching into fists and
Unclenching, stretching out
Searching for a trace of company
Smiling softly, he feels the sun against his face,
The old man lets go,
happy in the light of this dark and lonely place
The lone survivor
In an empty world
Where there is no history,
No future.
Only a man and his two lean arms,
A man and his torso,
A man and his two shaking legs,
He is his own ecosystem
His own mother,
He is his father,
He is his son,
His creaking frame the structure of a small house,
Built to fit a single man.
The Darling of Degas
She was perfect.
Everything about her.
Her face, her hands, her feet.
She was the definition of elegance and the embodiment of beauty.
She was born for the stage, assembled for it even,
with her perfect Balanchine body.
Such long, lean muscles
sharp ribs and hips that poked through her rehearsal leotards.
She was so captivating in the way that she was able to manipulate that beautiful body.
How she could make it move and sink into the deepest parts of a rhythm
until she was nothing more than an extension of the melody.
She was too perfect, too powerful, too beautiful for this world,
a protégée of romance,
a flower of Taglioni,
destined to be plucked and placed behind a fair maiden’s ear before reaching full bloom.
She turned like a top,
and spun like a leaf in the wind,
too dizzy to see the flickering flames that danced with her,
too high on her toes see the mess on the floor,
the broken glass of an overturned gas lamp.
An Icarian tragedy in the opera house.
Too perfect for this life,
this darling of Degas,
this fragile girl,
who danced, and danced, and danced,
like a wind-up music box on a little girl’s nightstand.
Skin
and bones
and bleeding toes,
over-saturated by stage-lights,
and broken by ballet.
Paint
Proportions,
color theory,
the meaning behind paintings.
I try to understand the mind of an artist,
how they created a specific work.
I have been trying to vocalize the way that I see art for years.
I’ve stood in front of Van Goghs and Picassos,
I’ve gazed at electronic renditions of Khalos,
I’ve studied countless local names in city galleries,
trying to see the meaning behind every stroke.
The contours and colors that capture the fabulous realities of life.
I mix reds and blues and greens and purples,
yellow, white, gray.
The bold, primary colors make an endless spectrum of values .
What a privilege it is to see color.
To observe and see clearly,
we must break the habit of filling in the gaps in our surroundings,
we must tame our hyper-active imaginations
in order to connect to the true colors of reality.
Trompe-L’Oeil paintings,
proportions and perspectives.
The illusion of three-dimensions,
effective from a few feet away,
but when you take just one step closer,
If you look for too long,
the entire painting falls into the most elementary brushstrokes and indications of shapes.
The bigger and more abstract,
the more natural a stroke is,
the more effective it is at truly imitating life.
To look at a painting up close is to see that all the little speckles of seafoam on the edge of a beautiful landscape
were just a careless flick of the wrist with a Titanium White-dipped fan-brush.
If you look at pre-renaissance religious works,
you see painters who got lost in the details.
The opulent landscapes, decorated with intricate portraits,
every person depicted has the same sad, pudgy face,
the exact same proportions.
Paintings tell stories.
snapshots of people, places, memories, and feelings.
I look through the eyes of past artists
As I deconstruct their greatest works.
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