The Exquisite Struggle

Cut Wheat Field

oil on panel  8" x 10"

"We shall not cease from exploration / And  in the end all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started /And know the place for the first time."

T.S. Eliot

"And I will have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

and evening full of the linnet's wings."

William Butler Yeats

The act of making a painting depends on a happy and difficult alignment of heart and occasion - earth and sky and place thrown against physical frailty and limitation; mixed with hope and memory and a vision born of recognition. This is what Eliot writes about and Yeats experiences (and where the difference in their poetry lies) - the exploration that strives to see and recognize things familiar made new. This exquisite struggle has another seductive aspect, as one becomes lost in the exploration, an awareness of having "some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow" - descends around the painter - like the light across a cut field as the day approaches a glorious end.  Enjoy!