Artist's Statement
"Flying World"
"You just have to go up
and then pause a little up there"
-Nijinsky
"I can fly!", my eighty-four year young father joyfully said. The FAA had
affirmed the renewal of his pilot's license this year. "But it is very costly-
so I'm not sure how much I will. But I CAN."
What about me? How had I forgotten?
Swore I would NEVER. Buried it, I guess, because of all of the marching I've
been asked to do. My shoes are worn; right knee, like Mom's, sometimes aches (I
call my left knee "Dad"), and the shuffle of my cadence over the Earth has
formed a kind of music I expect.
But as I looked up into the tree and saw its fruit in the sun, my eyes became my
feet- I walked, without thinking- up. Floating at treetops, seeing the rain's
bruised rainbow on the yellow pears and the holes in the leaves through which
heaven may pass, it was too late.
Began to fall!
Then I remembered that I can fly.
Yet, the colors remember- they, still in that first garden, with the shapes
held dear- even as these can be tubed, capped, and extruded into decoration,
they were/are what God showed to Moses, cowering in the cleft; His numinous,
spectral "backparts".
My paint tubes, at first easily giving forth, joining the eons' midden of piling
pigments, begin to lose their shapes for the never-before-seen-ones; I caress,
squeeze, strangle them for that color, that last bit emptying to fill a painted
paragon.
Below the studio window through which the last, furled leaves also yield, my
twisted tubes dance in the trash can. I retrieve them. So strange- the
relationship of matter to spirit. Jesus walked through a solid door and said He
was hungry. I devour this grounded world to make the only one- a brighter,
flying one- that could replace it.
To Paint
Angel in paper
Angel in bowl
Fly, but not away!
Music, my real house
Makes rooms as I go and go
Ballrooms in
Cars, trees, alleys.
Closets even in closets!
Cannot hide.
I have chosen red-orange,
Blue-violet, yellow-green
To build a room for you.
Not to rest effortless wings
But to sure up stillness
As a map to where
You are taking me.
I go and go
But not away!
Cannot fly,
I have hands
Meeting the angel
Whose hands
Are in mine.
