Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Rollers, Outer Banks; Martha Graham, "Blessed Dissatisfaction"



Rollers, Outer Banks
oil on canvas  16" x 24"

"When I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flows, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied."
"No artist is pleased."
"But then there is no satisfaction?"
"There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
Martha Graham's advice to dancer & choreographer Agnes de Mille

To conjure an image
first we must see
down to the bones discovered
and sinews holding tight
to secrets hard won and unkempt.

The eye informs the heart
to bring forth a shimmer memory
as long as magic convinces
shape and form and space
to meld mystery into one.

The imagined will find 
a source in the true
but cannot stop there,
for our hearts need both
to embrace the sky.


Here's to each one of us and our own version of that 'blessed unrest!"