Couple of paintings

The rocks in the foreground turned into a turtle.

The sketch in white on black paper. I forget how much fun black paper is. This was the first sheet on a new Arches watercolor block.

First watercolor on the new pad. I’m not sure if it’s finished. Seems to need more contrast.

Happy Halloween 🎃!

Shapeshifting Moonlight

My haiku “Shapeshifting Moonlight” is posted today as part of Pure Haiku’s Portal Series.  You can read it here, along with all the other wonderful portals in verse.  Thanks as always to Freya Pickard for including my words on Pure Haiku.

 Joyce Fienberg, 75
Richard Gottfried, 65
Rose Mallinger, 97
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66
Brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, 59 and 54
Bernice and Sylvan Simon, 84 and 86
Daniel Stein, 71
Melvin Wax, 88
Irving Younger, 69

 

Remembering those who lost their lives in the Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday. May they rest always in a portal of light.

Saturday Drawing 10/27/18

I went through an old sketchbook and reworked some stuff. I also have a brand spanking new set of Pelikan watercolors.

Perry. The weather here is rainy but the Nor’easter they were talking about. Be safe.

Quandaries of Wayfaring

wild
winter
branches that
conjure open
the cloisters of clouds–
revenant voyagers
securing figments that reflect
tomorrow’s revolving always–
reformulated problems of light
that pirouette–changelings shifting the sun

An etheree for Colleen’s #tanka Tuesday with synonyms for haunt and spell.

 

Fish

I’ve always found it relaxing drawing fish. This is one done with a set of inks I recently got. I’ve been in a slump due to a combination of working more hours and not having a good workspace.

Current workspace. An old computer desk in my husband’s (messy, unused) office.

No excuse though, really, for not painting. Art is my truth. I need to find the time to do it no matter what.

reflecting into themselves

reassembled air–
details gathered and released
into shimmering

trembling suspended,
the light falls into silence–
neither night nor day

throwing the questions
into vast infinity–
what the night reveals

This haiku sequence was inspired by Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.

The night sky is full of questions…

 

Comment-a-Haiku Poetry Contest: Hearkening

The moon sailing free–
hare pauses in the forest,
listening for light

Vita Brevis is once again sponsoring a haiku meet-and-greet.  You can post your own haiku here, and then read all the other ones that have been submitted too.

As I stated in my entry, this haiku was inspired by Jane Dougherty and her many hare poems, like this one or this one.  And of course the moon.

 

Scarecrow Joins the Circle Dance

Autumn. I fall into disrepair.  The sky still covers me, but my shadow dissolves into the remains of the golden ocean that heretofore eddied and flowed at my feet.  My skin lies ragged, unfilled.

I was crowned, once, with dark discordant ornaments. They sit on other thrones now, unrepentant pretenders, still calling the sun, the wind–the land itself–to task.

A crow flies over
a graveyard—blackness on stone–
change hangs in the air

When I saw Frank Tassone’s Haikai Challenge about scarecrows, I was intrigued.  I can’t think of Scarecrow without  thinking of Robert Okaji’s wise sage.  So whatever I did would be colored by what Robert has written.  I also decided to use the words from Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday, synonyms for ghost and hollow, as many of them seemed to fit on Scarecrow too.

As to Crow–he’s always around here somewhere.

Once again, different light makes the metallic paint change like the weather and the seasons…and this is another artwork inspired by Joan Mitchell being inspired by Van Gogh.  Circles within circles.

Also linked to dVerse Open Link Night.

Resolving the Equations

Multiply the circumstances–
What rises to the occasion?
What remains, over and over,
expecting to return again?

Look between—what is divided?
Multiply the circumstances.
What is buried?  Which measurements
contain dust and ashes, which bones?

Around the patterned interval
tricks appear as what they are not.
Multiply the circumstances–
ghostlines projected in the air.

Symbols transforming the unseen–
abridged, compounded, mythical–
saved by neither fortune nor fate–
(multiply the circumstances)

A quatern for Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.  This is another repeating form–the same idea, but with its own distinct rhythm.

 

 

A Strange Beauty

I consulted the Oracle with Colleen’s #Tanka Tuesday words–creepy and color.

The Oracle is definitely tuned into World Weather.  The poetic form is etheree.

This
eerie
sky moans in
shadow music–
purple languages
of dreams drunk on black blues–
stormmist spraying chanted screams
on mad frantic whispering winds–
unrisen suns sleepwalking beneath
a moonless sea crying beauty and blood.

The art shows the underpainting on the left, and the finished painting photographed in two different lights, middle and right.

This one is photographed with overhead light.