It’s a dream that never comes to me: there is no blossoming chestnut tree, no garden of rioting summer blooms, not even a house with empty rooms. My childhood garden has no calm, no mother to rock me in her arms. Because it was so long ago, I search for it with heart of woe. […]
Tag: Vincent van Gogh
Season of Choice
‘No blue without yellow and without orange, and if you do blue, then do yellow and orange as well, surely’ – Vincent van Gogh Spring is always fresh and new with gentleness of pastel hues so delicate, tender, newly born on a gentle, breezy, sunny morn. But autumn still retains the blue of summer skies, […]
To-Do List Before Painting Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear
Explore the brushstrokes on the print pinned to the wall.Paint it into the background of the latest self portrait.Don’t forget the most important thing of all – locate the pawnbroker’s ticket for your thick winter coat.Ask Theo for money for brushes and tubes of paint:Prussian blue, emerald, chrome yellow and vermillion.Gather kindling and logs – […]
Willow Wraith
Lithe limbs still clad with curly leavesand protective ivy shield her naked bark.There is no morning mist to clothe nor breezeto make her dance. Just green breath of trees,the scent of chlorophyll to transport herto the beginning, when spirits did not needto hide inanimate in plants, rocks, ice and water.Invisible to all except husband, son […]
Wheatfield with Crows
His paint oozed solitude and sadness. The turbulent brush almost fell from his hands. He knew it so well, this field of rude life and death, its diverging blood-rusted paths leading to the same horizon. The violent polarity of yellow field of wheat daubed in rows and blue sky smudged with clouds erupts with black […]
Broken Compass
Vincent van Gogh once wrote: ‘The conscience is a man’s compass’, but humankind’s compass broke and we have lost our way. We are drowning the planet in a mass of plastic, choking the rainforests with palm oil, sitting by and watching as the polar icecaps melt into the background of inane selfies posted on social […]
Artistry
Extraordinary blue sky and Japanese artistry accentuate delicate petals against the outline of gnarled branches. They offer new life, calm before the storm of a spring breeze rips the blossom from the trees and fills the Arles air with sweet almond vapour. Kim M. Russell, 24th April 2019 My response to Poets United Midweek Motif […]
A Secret Guest
Hidden in plain sight, trapped in the linseed scent, the musk of old art and paint, behind the green and ochre of the Olive Trees for over a century, it forfeited the freedom of life en plein air. Vincent didn’t notice his secret guest, having picked off “a good hundred flies and more”. The grasshopper […]
Vincent’s Self Portrait
‘…painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter…’ Vincent van Gogh A grubby strip of cloth bound around his head distracts from the bright spot of burning reds, a Japanese print pinned to the wall before he sliced his ear. He painted the background of […]
Hearthful of Flames
‘Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way’ – Vincent van Gogh A fire roared in his soul. All his neighbours saw was smoke; they gossiped […]
writing in north norfolk 