I will not be, however, if, inside me,

the crop does not keep sprouting,

the shoots first, breaking through the earth

to reach the light;

but the mothering earth is dark, and, deep inside me, I am dark.

I am a well in the water of which

the night leaves stars behind

and goes on alone across the fields.”

(Pablo Neruda, excerpt from “I ask for silence.”)

With the departure of material restraints recently in my paintings, a rapid return and development of an abstraction that centers on the body has come into the work. This is where poetry and my imagination enter the dialog. I love art and cultural theory, but I adore poetry. There are things that I need to be alive and romantic ideals are one of them. Not romance, but romanticism. I find in other’s words camaraderie for my own thoughts. I need Neruda, Rilke, or Solnit. I need to be lost, physically and imaginatively, and poetry reminds me of that. In the space of not having to know, in the permission to be lost, I find things my own mind is incapable of conjuring up. The most powerful aspect of Neruda is the ability to evoke the landscape (as something real and physical) and imagination or intangible aspects of being human into one poem. The thread that connects the concrete to the flight of the spirit, to an imagined space, many times the space of our emotions and imagination is the same thread that compels my practice and desire to make things. In my studio these are the experiences I bring to bear on my work. Color, composition, shapes, and space all work within this expansive place. I sometimes think, “If my work could function like one line of Neruda, I’ve been somewhere special and sacred.”

In A Field Guide to Getting Lost Rebecca Solnit writes about the “texture of longing. ” Her words echo my affinity to the poetic imagination and the experiences of my emotional life. Questions I ask in the studio often start from the poetic. How can I give a shape the texture of longing? How can color trigger nostalgia or memory? How can a shape whisper to another? How can I impart poetry into my shapes? How can I give each piece a different tone or pitch that is familiar?

“HeadBasher” in progress.