New Painting for Friday's Artwalk

What You Cannot Hold, Oil on Canvas, 24x30 unframed

You who let yourself feel: enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins behind you.

Blessed ones, whole ones
you where the heart begins:
You are the bow that shoots the arrows
and you are the target.

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

Sonnets to Orpheus I, 4
Rainer Maria Rilke

Joan Mitchell

I've spent the day wandering through design and art books and blogs. This painting by Joan Mitchell presented itself on two occasions. I'm going to take that as a sign.

Socializing

Here is a writing I came across last night by May Sarton, who as a poet struggled to protect the solitude needed to create great work.

The artist must go at his own speed. His whole life is a painful effort to turn himself inside out, and if he gives too much away at the shallow level of social intercourse he may lose the will to attempt a deeper excavation.

The Big Merge

Merging 1, 24 x 24 oil on canvas SOLD

I don't often use a small scale study to create a larger painting. However,last month I worked on some small scale (8x10) paintings on board that merged my processes of transparent glazes and opaque rubbings . Here is one of those small works translated to a larger format. Image a bit dark, the bottom right is alizarin orange.