Poetry from the Sky
In my previous post, I mentioned a new series I might call Poetry from the Sky. Its background shows how long an idea can take to develop, and how quietly it can accompany you.
As a student, I once skipped class with two friends on an unusually beautiful autumn day. We visited a magnificent ruin, then wandered into a large meadow bordered by forest. In the middle lay a broad, flat rock. We made ourselves comfortable there.
Suddenly one of us noticed something high in the air. We watched until we could make it out: leaves, quite a number of them, dancing down towards us. How had they reached us in the middle of that great meadow? Later, I wondered whether rising warm air had carried them up from the trees. I never knew for certain. Years later, the memory found its way into image #1.
Another memory goes back to childhood: a winter visit to my grandmother. After a cold, damp night of snow and ice, I looked out in the morning and found a twig frozen against the window. It partly obscured the view. That small sight stayed with me and eventually became image #2.
Poem from the Sky
Years later, escaping the summer heat in the city, I visited friends in the country. We sat on their veranda at night, watching the stars and shooting stars. The house was dark except for light from a skylight, which formed a cone in the air. Suddenly something long and thin slipped through it, light and dancing, almost like a dragon. Someone suggested it might be cassette tape: it had a reddish gleam.
It brought back a remembered image from Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (影武者, Shadow Warrior): mounted warriors descending a steep slope, like heavy red snowflakes. That is how the scene has stayed with me. For me, it too was poetry from the sky.
My first painting of the idea did not quite work; the canvas was poorly suited to what I wanted to do (image #3). I changed my approach, and image #4 followed.
Since then, something has stuck in the back of my mind: characters that float down from the sky like leaves or something similar and write a poem at the same time.
In a new series, I have now started to treat the subject more abstractly and my work is moving in this direction.
This first abstract attempt seems a little crude to me. Still, I did not want to work away its spontaneous, almost innocent quality. I tried another version instead, giving it more space, more painterly movement, and rounded forms that suggest an inner life.
I keep returning to the thought of signs drifting down from the sky, writing a poem as they fall. I do not yet know all the forms it might take.
Related articles: Because It’s Wednesday Again… · Painted Haiku · Ginkgo Leaves
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