A Battle of Opposites, "Earth Your Dancing Place", May Swenson, A Celebration and A Holding Onto

November Stump

  oil on panel  8" x 10"

"Take the earth for your own large room

and the floor of the earth

carpeted with sunlight

and hung round with silver wind

for your dancing place."

May Swenson

from her poem,  "Earth Your Dancing Place"

Down Hill Stump

  oil on panel  8" x 10"

I cannot say exactly why, but when in doubt of my work or perhaps just when looking for a new path, I return to the woods, to the images of these rotting stumps. Beside the idea that they are central to a cycle of life that continues with no concern or awareness of us, these old stumps offer me much more. They are color and posture and gesture and allow me a precarious place between abstract expression and solid reality. This balancing place is the territory in which I feel I must plant my work's flag - and which can so easily elude me. All I know is this;  I will celebrate the physical stuff paintings are made of  - while I cannot completely let go of where they come from - 

this battle of opposites that fills up my waking days. 

Stump and Rock

  oil on panel  10" x 8"

"Train your hands

as birds to be

brooding or nimble

Move your body

as the horses

sweeping on slender hooves

over crag and prairie

with fleeing manes

and aloofness in their limbs"

also by May Swenson

from "Earth Your Dancing Place"