INSERTS

 

Can a two dimensional object have three dimensional properties? The triptych TREE has three constructed inserts... one at the heart of the tree & one in each of the desert wings. The initial concept was to have an eraser in the centre & two objects in the eyes of the desert. First thought: a set of car keys in one & a miniature Easter Island head in the other. The solution arrived at is better. Shiva dancing presents the ineradicable process of creation & destruction that crystalizes the super nova of our universe. You have to love the green oxidized surface  of the statuette. The only red in the entire painting is the red of the BIC lighters... plastic fantastic destruction... cheap, modern & disposable like the world we inhabit. The map behind the lighters are the streets of Saskatoon... one small city in the termite heap we call home. I have strung the bowstring tight to the point of snapping. Can you dig it? Sproing.

THE FACE OF THE CREATOR

When you imagine the Face what do you see? I admire the cultures who out of humility decline to put the Name down or have no pictures or statues. The history of my civilization is a history of images. Most of the images are at core an image of the Divine. What is the face of the Divine? Like all poetry we create a version... a template... & some versions are closer than other the image we are made in. Shiva dancing in the flames...the Nataraj... the cosmic dancer who performs his divine dance to destroy a weary universe to make way for the new. That is an image I return to  over & over. The solstice is here. The world did not end once again. The sun returns to dark Saskatchewan. The son of man is born anew. Engulfed by destruction the creation continues. Shiva still dancin’ in them flames.

EVE OF DESTRUCTION 20/12/2012

20/12/2012. The dreadful has already happened. It is always the eve of destruction. Being is always seduced by non-being. Pull the curtains on the floor of the glass bottom boat. Peer into the deep blue of the deep blue. The dreadful has already happened. We are living late in the era of Leonard Cohen, our great prophet... our Rabbi... our teacher. “There is a crack in everything... that’s how the light gets in”. I heard Leonard singing the other night. He knows he is already dead. He sings from a place beyond this temporal world... beyond the eve of destruction. The dreadful has already happened. If you live your life like you are already beyond the eve of destruction... like you are already dead, the living is easy. Remember the Phoenix. Remember the crucifixion. The dreadful has already happened. The bird of paradise rises from the ashes.

TEXTURE

Art works in the perception of the texture from which the art is constructed. Music is rhythm... melody...harmony... one sound following the next. Poetry is words... images... one sound following the next. Sculpture is bronze.. marble ... wood.... “Oh, Please let me touch that cold stainless steel!”   Painting is... painting is the glory of colour upon colour. As a painter I look to what colours... what surfaces I can place on the surface... the tabla rasa of my canvas to delight the eye... my eye... your eye.  The Divinity of the Universe created Nature... its 63 laws. Then the volcano of possibilty erupted.... textures upon textures. Surfaces upon surfaces. No human meaning... just the beauty... the simplicity of textures to be perceived. Fall in love with the textures of this Universe.... they are God’s skin.

VERTICAL 1

If the daily world we live in lies on the horizontal, then the world we seek, the world of the spirit lies above and below us. Come in from the far reaches of your despair the desert of your destruction to the third eye of Shiva. Once you have arrived at that centre explode upwards... soar up the majestic trunk of the tree of life into the eye of the sun. Imagine a TREE a thousand feet high. The bounds of a life time is horizontal... flat.  Eternity is on the other axis. The epiphany launches us upward out of ourselves. Movement comes in from the edge of the circle to the centre and from the centre it must go Up and Up and Up. In and Up. In and Up. In and Up. The details of the daily... the details of the destruction are just that. A very thin skin of the onion of God’s Creation. When you stand at the heart of the tree of eternity and look up into the eye of the Sun you know that the creation is and always be.... Perfect.

VERTICAL 2

HORIZONTAL

We live on the horizontal. This mortal existence with all its sunrises and sunsets. We look at the asphalt at our feet. We kick the empty pop can into the gutter. We flatten the rain forest to make pasture for the cows that Micky D uses to make our Big Macs. We scallop out the coal seams. We scrape the mountains down to bedrock for the tar we use to make our action figure toys. Look at the surface of Mars or Venus. That is the flatness the horizontal we are creating for ourselves in the next generation. Do you love those big heads on Easter Island... they look grand against the flat backdrop don’t they? When you cut down all the trees you are left with desert. There is a beauty in the starkness. It is a beauty that does not include you or me. Look at my painting. In the centre is the power of the tree of life. Move to the horizons. There is nothing but desert, dark clouds, and death.

TREE

LAST TREE ON EASTER ISLAND 

               for Sandra Epp Dec 1, 2012

The last tree on Easter Island

The last tree on Clayquot Sound

Who cut, who cut it, who cut it down?

I cut, I cut it , I cut it down.

The Limber Pine, a seedling when Columbus headed west.

It’s I that weeps not Willow, She bends to caress.

A Joshua in the desert & my tongue so parched.

We kids we swung on a rope from the Golden Larch 

& Maple scarlet, we put my father in the home for the lost.

A Chickadee dee dee in the Cottonwood frost.

It’s Crab Apple wine & the new bride blushes rose.

& Sumac tea is red as desire if you’re all alone.

I’m choking from the Choke Cherry on your crazy dare.

The Spruce caked thick, & breath, my bridal veil.

I kissed you first, so shy, when Magnolia bloomed.

The viewing done, the Poplar bark so smooth and cool.

The last tree on Easter Island

The last tree on Clayquot Sound

Who cut, who cut it, who cut it down?

You  cut,you cut it , you cut it down.

I climbed the Chestnut for conkers’ spike ball seeds.

The Mangrove swamp after diving off Amber Gris key.

In love with another so I planted Tentpole shoots.
& Whirly Gigs crunched beneath my army boots.

A Tamarack, rain-tipsy after the Home-coming Ball.

The fallen Redwood rotten... a giant lifts up tall.

Cedar Wax-wing in the Mountain Ash, December Morn.

The Paper Birch glowed green the day my son was born.

The Baobob & the Bodhi  & Buddha below.

A platform high in the Elm with Edgar my crow.

The cops cuffed Pa in a Cherry blizzard in May.

The alders shivered silver & I knew I was okay.

The last tree on Easter Island

The last tree on Clayquot Sound

Who cut, who cut it, who cut it down?

We cut, We cut it , We cut it down.