Help
Sign In
art
November 2009 
Wooden Dragonfly
Doug
28X20" Watercolor and Indian ink on paper
Wooden Dragonfly
Thin wood like an old
Weathered clothespin
That spring mother
Was hanging the laundry out
And the light like it would never end,
That moment.
Unlike those two
Latched together so wonderfully
Purple-blue on the impossibly green grass
At Pinnacles.
And one wing shorter then the other
So it can't really fly
Or if it could
It would go in circles
Like a rower
Who has lost an oar
On the morning lake
By the grass
Where the dragonflies
Of dusk
Tease of promised love.
So we could walk
This night beach so serious gazing
For magical stones
For East (birth, yellow-green),
South (Ocean, youth),
West (Fire, older now),
North (white of winter, black) and
Build our alter
Encircle us,
Spiral in like dragonflies
In August Lust
Or we could just laugh
Knowing
The magic
Is there always
And we really don't know how to fly
But in our dreams
Access: Public
Wow what a masterpiece, I am in the presence of a great artist! And an excellent poet too and a database administrator, a planner and a cook. Your awesome Doug. We are glad to have a friend like you, a kind gentleman.
best artistic wishes,
Samme
Lol! Thank you Samme! Oh that sounds so incongruent artist, poet and database administrator! OMG no wonder I travel in circles! but they're pretty damn good circles because of the friends I have found within them.
“…one wing shorter then the other
So it can't really fly
Or if it could
It would go in circles
Like a rower
Who has lost an oar…”
- and -
“… And we really don't know how to fly
But in our dreams..”is there a relationship here?
Hi Hummy! Yes there is always a relationship here, it just depends on the moment. And right now a big hug for you. I think love has to be simple, because we are simple and the magic just happens because we are loved. We can't fly but we do anyway. Isn't it wonderful?
aah I didn't mention my initial response!
I LOVE the painting
spontaneous
lightness of touch
not laboured
and
ambiguity in the colour
- brush work and word flow with ease
Doug…exquisite, excellent & elegant..
& this goes for you, your painting, your poetry &
the shorter wing making you fly in perfect circles..
thank you for this.. I'll be flying into the day.. love tara
I love your new picture, Doug. So inspiring in it's freedom of form.
My mind refuses to read the words that accompany it on the blog, so I'll have to leave that for later…. I'm afraid I have overdone it with online reading yesterday…
I love the softness of the colors and the forms - just notice that my stubborn mind refuses to express in words as well.
So know at least that I'm enjoying this work of yours a lot, and that I feel inspired and nourished just by looking at it.
With love and gratitude.
Gabriele
sensual and delightful! it sings of summer, love and lust and joy.
maybe we only fly in dreams, day or night, but it's real enough to me! let's fly!
Hi Hummy and Thank you!
Lol! Yes Picasso was right, an artist has to be two people, one who knows how to paint and the other who knows when to stop. I’m learning that I know neither and just trust that it’ll be what it needs to be without my second guessing the process or the outcome.
Thank you sweet Tara!
I feel that so exquisitely and wings don’t matter for this flight and all I ever hope for is to fall gracefully like a maple seed.
Hi Gabriele!
I’ve been enjoying your gardens of color as well and thank you for visiting with me in mine. We can walk together in silence and leave words for another day.
Ah Nicole! Big hugs!
It’s funny but I think our culture has the cart before the horse and we call the tangible real and the intangible not real and there is nothing “only” about flying in our dreams and love is not about the person out there in our arms but about the expanding space it creates within us. A space that engulfs us all.
yes! expanding space, are you thinking of the first elegy of Rilke?
Don't you know yet ? Fling out of your arms the
emptiness into the spaces we breath -perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air in their more fervent flight.
Hi Nicole! That is beautiful and no I haven't heard that before just now.
Lol I just paste the rough and ready stuff of my inner workings and the beauty you bring to my humble offerings is exquisite. I love how that works!
Thank you lovely lady!
Mmmm…..a picture that speaks a thousand poetic words and vice versa…mesmerizing…the artist and his art…like sweet rain on our desert sand…leaving us parching for more…
Oh hello! By the time I've read down to here, there's tears in my eyes. You all have taken me through so many images of my heart! Truly we're so lucky to be here in this space of light! Thank you. Yes, truly beautiful.
lol, yes, I think it was Clement Greenberg who said the critic is there to shoot the artist when the paintings finished
- funny how tempting overworking/2nd guessing is!
Hi Amy! I'm so glad you wandered in here and Thank You!
Hi Martha! Yes I know what you mean. I always feel like tears are the unverse saying “Yes I agree”.
Hummy, you know the more I think about the more I realize the vast difference between art and craft. Craft is the Victoria's Secret model and art is the painfully shy girl in the high school cafeteria with food tray in hand and no one saved her a seat at the table and so in humiliation she scuttles off to the back of the room to eat alone, hoping no one will notice and hoping someone will notice.
where does the Victoria's secret model eat lunch when she's done offering her body as a kiosk for the newest posting of gender rhetoric? Perhaps the difference between kraft and art is five minutes? …sorry, it's the women's studies in me. Breaks out like hives and burns the skin, you know?
wow interesting, Doug!
mmm.. my immediate thoughts are -
yes - art is that immediate and 'undressed'
while craft is.. well, functional I guess, in terms of what can be touched.
Craft is made for a 'reason'
while art - why… no body can really name why it's made…
this is why the materialists of the world have such a field day tryiing to box it and order artists to be 'relevant'.
Art is also that creative energy which roars silently through the veins - the invisible intangible veins too -
Artists - sit in the back seat, as you say - yet lead in so many ways
look at how it is art recorded in all the history books
while other events (like Victoria and her secret) come and go…
Hi Martha! Hi Hummy!
Whew I might be in a little trouble here! Lol! Well let me do some splaining. When I was writing this I was thinking that the Victoria's Secret model and the painfully shy girl are the same girl so they both scuttle off the the back of the room to be invisable, only one does it literally and the other joins the table but is still not seen. On the other hand I'm not really talking about women, I'm talking about what is real and alive versus illusional and I'm talking about my own sense of what is beautiful and it's not the 20 foot high slick Victoria's Secret add pastered on Market and 7th Street, it's the rain that runs across the sidewalk, into the cracks and gutters, altering forms, creating canyons and rivers and seas and we are that water and it has no form that can be defined because it is always moving.
Isn't that wonderful Martha and Hummy?
Because I can never really know what or who you are, only that you are life and I love you.
Fresh, spontaneous and fun, your short wing dragonfly reminded me of how bumblebees are aerodynamically not supposed to fly - but you know what they can fly still at really high altitudes where the air very nearly isn't !!!!! Smiles.
Hello dear Doug
i realized today that I hadnt commented on your new picture..even though I loved it from the first moment I saw it in your avatar. For me it brings up in me a black and white world meeting the color world…and the two converging…and flying off together on the wings of the dragonflys….no small feat in either case! :-) Lovely as always and brilliant in its softness and flowing essence…somewhat like you Douglas…just so briliant and soft and flowing…hugs and love.
Hi Zephyr! So nice to see you and Thank you! I love seeing all this flight that shouldn't take place and yet it does and friendship is the air under our wings.
Thank you Julia! What beautiful images you bring with you! Yes, I'd like to paint those too!
Flowing with you in hugs and love!
that is precious, Doug
What comes through in both the poem and the painting is your connection with Divine Inspiration. The poem speaks to me how the “impossible” is made “possible” if we can transcend the intellect and swim in the boundless lake of creativity. Lovely.
Ah Hummy, Catherine! What I have to say has no words but must be expressed physically with a great big hug ((()))! Thank you for floating with me in this boundless ocean!
lovely lovely lovely
Hi Sara and thank you, thank you, thank you lovely lady!