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POETRY about Life and Painting
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Selections from Painting the Sun:
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Sun/flower Streams of yellow ochre down a soaked and heavy page create a plane of gold no brush has touched. To make a picture out of it so it will be something I add leaves in a horrible shade of green. It is no longer pristine and wild! I hold the sun under a faucet, scrub away green with an old toothbrush. Behind still brilliant petals, pale green gold remains. Blurs of ochre look like seeds and sunspots. Sun/flower lights up everything for miles around. |
Monet's Waterlilies
Having seen this in books, I was not prepared for twenty feet of canvas, soaking wet with water lilies, the French sun upon us and breezes stirring my hair and their light head, blowing across saucer leaves split at one side for frogs to disappear through. And that much water – lavender and blue, green and mauve. I dipped both hands in and shook droplets upon the floor until the guard came and said, “No bathing in the painting.” Davenport On a wooded cliff above the sea we set up easels. Watch out, we laugh. We size up wave-tossed grandeur. When fog releases, grey turns blue. Shadows sliding along a sloping cypress reveal contours in stripes and spills, then appear on canvas in blue and umber. In the shaded grove, trees lean into sun above stumps of others taken with a saw. Our path runs near the edge. 
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Watercolor Chicken House When I was an Eastern child visiting Grandma’s Iowa farm I’d go inside her strawy-clucky chicken house for the treasure of eggs. Before my eyes adjusted to the dark there’d always be the sudden startle of a defensive hen. Grandma chuckled. Expertly she helped me find warm brown eggs for breakfast. I sketch the sagging lines, dry brush grain on mossy boards, scumble in crumbling shingles, lay sunlight on the unhinged door, add faded red on the side that got least rain and a plum tree in memory of my grandma’s golden plums. She was cautious in her affection. Couldn’t get too close to someone she might not see in years. She took my hand in hers, then stooped and went first into velvety darkness. ***************************************** Crazy Fog
The forecast says 90 but there’s a warning chill so you bike to the cliff in orange fleece, carrying paints to lure the artist out. The sun turns greasy. Behind ragged sheets of sea-scented fog color is erased. Chill sends you to the beach where the sun shines. A Picasso-like woman in red bathing suit stands like a fortress on large dented thighs, calls, "Come on! You’ll be late!" But to her granddaughter building a castle the warning’s as distant as the foghorn up the hill. You’re glad, because you’re painting them. Poem and art by Pegatha Hughes 
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