An Artist Works

Evening, 31 August 1822 Above, the ungraspable in grey or white or sometimes black, I read now is wrought of Forms, this water overhead. What Science seeks to calibrate quickens my palette, hand and knife and revives my boyish eyes to see pictures in the sky. — The series of cloud studies painted by John

Solutrean Hypothesis

For a season, transient over the ice-pack, her bundle regarded hope while his averred fealty. Both solicited the dragon’s gate yet overlooked the soft pearl which sustains the breath and pulse of para-reality. — The Solutrean hypothesis proposes that the first people to settle in the North Americas travelled from the landmass now known as Europe. It

PUCKISH PAINTINGS ABOVE THE STAIRS

Here follows a piece I wrote recently about the work of contemporary Swedish artist, Per-Inge Isheden. AN INTRODUCTION TO PER-INGE ISHEDEN VIEWING ‘INFERNO’                          In London’s Mayfair is a Regency building with eight flights of narrow stairs. Above those stairs, in the highest apartment, I first viewed “Inferno” (2007; image right). The vollmilch nymphs pouring champagne

Dante’s Barmaids

  Of nymphs, I write for money; On canvas, there they dance. “Champagne,” they laugh, in corsets corked with bubbles popping out.   — This poem was inspired by a detail from “Inferno,” a painting by contemporary Swedish artist Per-Inge Isheden. “Inferno” is a portrait of the nineteenth-century Swedish playwright, literary luminary and painter August Strindberg (1849 –