Journal: An Online Notebook Updated By The Artist
Posts related to Poetry
2008-05-27 04:09:39 | In the Country
Book 130, Entries for 25-26 May 2008 with studies of a tree at midday and the bright star Vega reflected in the pond at night, watercolor, graphite and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, page size 4 x 6″ In the Country I hiked along a freshly asphalted lane through woods and fields past the occasional dirt driveway. Sprays of white blackberry and yellow buttercups brushed my legs. After a long walk the trees opened to a vista of red earth jumbled with roots and stumps. Recent lumbering had left acres of devastation. Beside me of hillock of stumps rose out of the wreckage. I was surprised when a sudden wind seemed to aim right at the point where I was looking. The small cyclone raked a single trunk and the bark scattered all around as if there had been a blast. I was showered in bark. A strange moment; I had to laugh out loud. That evening I stepped out into the clear night; the sky brimming with stars. Yellow Saturn sat beside Reglus in the constellation Leo above. I made my way through the pitch black down a familiar dirt trail to the pond. Feeling the way with my feet, I turned slowly toward the frogs and other creatures clicking, creaking, and shouting in the brush. Moving closer, the sound became so intense it pelted me, shaking my bones. I looked into the pond where bright Vega sat, brilliant, undiminished in reflection. That light left the star 27 years ago, a point near the beginning of my journals. I laughed again and felt a small part of the pantomime. Hats off to Wallace Stevens; see Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, III. ...Read More
2008-04-19 11:24:47 | Wallace Stevens Walking
Photograph of artist Charles Ritchie in front of the home where Wallace Stevens lived in Hartford, Connecticut. The house remains a private residence. Photographer: Samantha Ritchie, August 2004. Wallace Stevens Walking Poet Wallace Stevens has influenced my creative practice. In his early years, Stevens tried journalism and law in New York City but eventually settled in Connecticut to work for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. Stevens was good at insurance; he spent thirty years in the company and rose to the position of vice-president. Stevens was also good at writing poetry. Wallace Stevens didn’t drive; he walked the two mile stretch to the office and two miles back each working day. On those walks he composed in his head some of the most powerful and significant poetry of our age; perhaps any age. Stevens once said,” It gives a man character as a poet to have this daily contact with a job”. I certainly feel that having a career interpenetrate my artist life has benefited me. I have had the good fortune to do curatorial work for a living. The position has fed my intellectual curiosity, provided high artistic models to follow, and offered financial security. I make the art I want to make; and keep the often-destructive pressure of selling my art for a living at bay. And I have flourished in the time constraints that accompany having two careers and have developed tools that complement the situation; I keep my journal with me at all times; I milk my early morning hours in the studio for all they are worth. And I have benefited from relationships with scores of interesting and wonderful people. Stevens got up early and read; he composed on the streets as he walked (and sometimes at lunch). And when he arrived at his job something about the con ...Read More
2008-04-12 04:30:22 | The Star Magnolia
Charles Ritchie, two Polaroid photographs of a star magnolia, (both images taken approximately 1:15 pm, 11 April 2000) The Star Magnolia As daffodils flooded the front yard, forsythia glowed, and the star magnolia exploded white across the street, I sat at my window dazed. We had just put our cat to sleep. Cancer took him; far too young. The day’s beauty heightened the sadness. April is the cruelest month. I gazed into the star magnolia and suddenly I realized my loss would always be tied to this flowering. Nothing new about this kind of association. A year after Lincoln died, Walt Whitman remembered his hero in a poem, When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. Likewise for me, the significance of blossoms had changed. Looking down at my worktable, I saw my tiny drawing, Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia; one of my problem children; a drawing that I had been working on for years. I’ve been trotting it out for the few weeks of peak blossoms and then putting it away, always dissatisfied; perennially hopeful for a recovery during next year’s session. I’ve worked and reworked the tiny sheet; erased it, scrubbed the paper with large flat, synthetic bristle brushes pulling out the watercolor (see images below). I’ve redrawn and repainted, and then scrubbed and erased again. I’m not sure what is so hard about this piece. Perhaps it is finding the right twilight atmosphere. Perhaps it is coaxing nuances of color that don’t overpower. Perhaps it is the composition. During the current session, I removed two subjects from the foreground of the drawing: a postcard and a dried orange. Scrubbed them away, and replaced them with an image of one of my own larger drawings; another of my trouble children: Night with Orion. This felt better. The new ...Read More
2008-01-20 02:49:56 | Wall/Window/Mirror: "I dwell in possibility"
Self-Portrait, 1979, acrylic and tempera on paper, 5 7/8 x 7 5/8″, collection of the artist Wall/Window/Mirror: “I dwell in possibility” The paintings I enjoy are true to reality; honest about the fact that their surface is a wall no eye can penetrate. They seduce with materials and technique. At the same time I expect a painting to take me somewhere; usually through the magic of illusionism, converting that wall into a window upon other worlds. I believe such transformations can empower the viewer, providing a mirror to turn upon themselves. Wall, window, mirror: three expectations for painting. Emily Dickenson’s poem I dwell in possibility (#657) develops through these states. The poem passes from the concreteness of house and prose; dives through windows and doors through diaphanous cedars, and then springs through roof to open sky. In the first two stanzas we see interpenetrations of house and landscape, interior and exterior, and intimate and immense space which return and unite with the self in the third stanza. Wall, window, mirror; I seek these in my work. Folded Self Portrait with Night I: Graphite, 2007, graphite on Fabriano paper, 4 1/4 x 12 1/4″, collection of the artist ...Read More