Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Jeff Skewes #5 In through the out door










The allegory begins
a right of passage
the story goes
of a painter's dream
eastward and left at the door

this scene would grow
to inhabit a poet's thinking
an eternal waiting room, of sorts
where nothing changed
except time and coincidence

at the door of Babu's sacred chambre
a naive voyager, so inspired
by this fleeting view, a coup d'oeil
easily and perpetually
falls into its aperture

incense from argarwood
burns all history and strangeness
from reality, as in a dream
a friend of a friend
you could say...

outside a room in Lhasa
left just so, a flower
like Pisano's tower
it's perfected angle understood
seen clearly now through the clouds



image: Oblique Strategy 1. Oil paint on insulation material on ply 45x45 cm jskewes.

10 comments:

  1. I enjoy both poem and painting, but separatly ... may be something too much "abstract" in the picture that makes it difficult for me to see a link with the words ...

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    1. Yes I understand and believe this can be true... ART!it's a funny business (:
      I am inpired to play more with this piece. Tankx.

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  2. I see many of the things in the poem in the painting, it looks like a map and a dream to me, or aerial views, or fleeting views, or through an aperture, for me I feel connections between the words and painting. I really respond to the title. Something I have been noticing in my own work, I have a difficulty with the connecting words like 'from' or 'by' that often land at the beginning of a line, and feel strange at the end of one if I place them there, but are sometimes necessary. Does anyone else have that discomfort? How do people feel the beginning of a line should function generally? What do you think Jeffree?

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    1. Art is tricky.... and is beyond or preceding words. That's possibly the point. I aim here to compliment the written with visual art. I'm glad and happy you see so much and say so.
      Regarding connecting words and : This is a constant issue as one enters and exits the line, stanza, panel, brush stroke, screen, gesture etc. Someone once said to me of theatre “the content takes care of itself - the harder bit is crafting all those entrances and exits' - meaning how one gets on and off a platform (stage) is critical.
      If I have an uncomfortable entre or exiting word - I usually cut it, replace it or link it forward or backward. Occasionally, with the 'right' word I also like to leave something un-crafted / un-fixed / un-smoothed just hanging out there - Sometimes it's gold, other times it lead. The reader could have fun with it too!
      I like to think a new line should get attention - so I try to craft a looker or a nice pass if I can.
      Ah the alchemy of it all.

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  3. Thanks, Jeffree, that is a great explanation and really helps me think about this issue of the beginning of a line and connecting words. I like the 'beyond or preceding words' aspects of art that you mention at the beginning too. That challenge in words to express or come near to or suggest the possibly unstateable, representing other forms in words, like the experience of music, is something I attempt every so often, it is probably often there in my poems/prose, but sometimes I try to do it completely and I find it so difficult but a great place to challenge myself. Perhaps you have revealed an aspect of why words and images work so well together to me, not illustrative, but complementary. Which is how your project is set up of course, but i find interesting how I rediscover people's projects in a sense even time I return to them. I have changed, they have changed.

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  4. The theatre analogy is really helpful. The performance of it.

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  5. Ramble on...
    there must be a song in this,,,,:D

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