Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Well, there’s a lion… and a tree, and desert plants, and a stylized rose and a burning dove with a key on a rope and an arm and an eye and…. plenty to go around.
Yeah, right.
Deep Ellum Graffiti
Monthly Archives: April 2013
The Sky
The sky above Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
(click for a larger version on Flickr)
When I was a little kid, I had a paint-by-number kit… you know, one of those bilious hunks of cheap canvas board with numbered areas printed in blue ink that corresponded with little plastic tubs of oil paint. Now, I imagine they come with some sort of water-based acrylic – safer and easier for children – but this one had real slow-drying artists’ oil paint.
I might have been six years old… maybe seven. Fifty years ago.
I sat at the kitchen table, wielding the cheap brush that came with the kit, carefully cleaning it after each color and moving across the canvas matching the numbers with the proper paint. It amazed me… that I could create an actual work of art (unfortunately, my skills have advanced little since).
It didn’t seem too hard to me to make the leap beyond the preprinted canvas – surely it wouldn’t be that hard to do yourself. I was a little kid, what did I know? Nothing about composition, blending… and nothing about mixing colors.
What I especially remember is the sky above the sailboat. The scene had the boat fighting against a headwind on a dramatic tumbling, mostly overcast day – with the heavens filled with irregular patches of brown, beige, gray, and a little blue peeking through here and there. It was beautiful to me.
Now, whenever I have a sky like that… like this, my subconscious conjures up the by-the-mumbers painting of the sailboat from the distant cobwebby recesses of the past. Before I realize what I am thinking about, weather like this, fills my nose with the unmistakable odor of linseed oil and turpentine. Only then do I pause, look up, and remember the sailboat.
Still More Blooms
“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Dallas Blooms, Dallas Arboretum
“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”
― Oscar Wilde
“There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate.
The red rose cries, “She is near, she is near;”
And the white rose weeps, “She is late;”
The larkspur listens, “I hear, I hear;”
And the lily whispers, “I wait.”She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead,
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.”
― Alfred Tennyson
Blooms
“You’re frustrated because you keep waiting for the blooming of flowers of which you have yet to sow the seeds.”
― Steve Maraboli
Dallas Blooms, Dallas Arboretum
It was odd walking around the Arboretum – I kept expecting to see the Chihuly Glass and it isn’t there any more. The gorgeous colors of Dallas Blooms made up for the absence of the sculptures.
My poor picture taking talents don’t do justice. Peggy does a better job than I do.
“I stopped in front of a florist’s window. Behind me, the screeching and throbbing boulevard vanished. Gone, too, were the voices of newspaper vendors selling their daily poisoned flowers. Facing me, behind the glass curtain, a fairyland. Shining, plump carnations, with the pink voluptuousness of women about to reach maturity, poised for the first step of a sprightly dance; shamelessly lascivious gladioli; virginal branches of white lilac; roses lost in pure meditation, undecided between the metaphysical white and the unreal yellow of a sky after the rain.”
― Emil Dorian, Quality of Witness: A Romanian Diary, 1937-1944
Bill Chance 