Day 13. Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –

  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

     For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

  Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

     And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

     With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                            Praise him.

This poem is another of my old favorites. I was initially drawn to it over fifteen years ago because the author and I had the same last name. Now the lines come to me when I’m looking at a horizon on a particularly beautiful day when the light seems to speckle everything below it with brightness.

I took the reference photo for this one at the Global Wildlife Center a couple months ago. Ezra and I feed the giraffes, deer, and even the cow from our hands. The zebras, the say, bite, so you have to put the food on the ground for them.

I wanted this painting to be big. In fact, I’d prepped a 24×24 for it. But I’m trying to be more of a planner. I consider today’s painting a sketch for a larger one coming– a way to work out the colors and composition before committing to the much larger canvas.

This poem and this painting also remind me that my abstracts and animals/landscapes can go hand in hand. I don’t have to pick. I like being “fickle and “freckled”:  All things counter, original, spare, strange;/Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)/ With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;…