treating the piece titled, "To Move a Bloom" with a mixture of coffee, cinnamon and vanillaI am currently working on a piece I have wanted a reason to develop for over a decade now. It was not something I would simply do without a reason because of it's inspiration and meaning to me. I knew it would be an intense dedication of my energy that I would have to begin and stay with until completion.
There are a few of those types of pieces where the desire to see it unfold is so complete that I am consumed by it and working on it up to 30 hours straight in one sitting. Others still, that I can put down and work on or pick up again, and even others which are what I call my "now and then's". I knew that in order to communicate what I wanted on the canvas the piece would require my undivided attention.
The inspiration took seed after I read a poem by E.E. Cummings titled, "somewhere i have never travelled" - the poem goes as follows.
somewhere i have never travelled
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will enclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
This poem moved me to the point where it just stuck in my head, and the final sentence repeated itself in my mind like the chorus to a favorite song. The touching honesty and adoration behind it, and the longing - it inspired me at first to write a poem as a response to it. I wanted the poem to be a response, as in conversation to E.E. Cummings' piece. That is the second half of this inspiration, and my poem is below.Stubborn Bloom
With all of their doings and deeds never has there been a set of hands made that could force a flower open.
Too soon to bruise and kill such sensitive bloom would the fumbling be, ultimately the attempt destroying the thing they wish to see in it's entirety.
So much more sensitive am I.
Still so effortlessly you place a calm in my heart, and over again the process begins. My dearest sir, gardener of my most personal, were our moments as to petals this time past would lay set a garden like none other.
Forever springtime and the flowers waxing full as the moon, never to know thirst nor threatened by fighting storm or biting thing.
A place most beautiful in a space most sacred we have created and for only you for you have moved the most stubborn but precious bloom.
Copyright ©2008 Patrick Gorman Pettis
And so with these two things being my bulk of inspiration the title of the piece is, "To Move a Bloom". There is more behind it of course which I will detail in the entries to come. Right now the painting is still a baby.
me using thistle, clover and rhubarb to lay a foundation of the piece titled, "To Move a Bloom"More Later ;)
