Six Poems and Two Paintings
to dive
down
to the
seafloor
and lay
the canvas
over the
light
is to
be a
painter
is to
dive
down
toward
a mirror
in which
the sky
turns
in which
the stars
burn like
tongues
of flame
dragged
along
by a wave
like a
sticky
surface
caught
on the leg
of a child
walking
across
a sandbar
tearing
the fabric
of the
visible
dragging
it with
it until
reality is
revealed
like a
sheet
pulled
from
a body
is to
be a
painter
and lay
a sheet
of the visible
over a
portal
to a city
Robert Fernandez, Torch 3, 2023. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 X 48 inches.
Flesh (Painting)
a painting
has paint
as Richter
said but
there is
a spectrum
at the far
ends of which
one could say
a painting
is a painting
and a drawing
a drawing
even if
a painting
has no paint
and a drawing
does and in
between
is a zone
where it is
my prerogative
to say whether
a work is
a painting
or a drawing
which is not
a determination
arrived at
arbitrarily
but one guided
by the phenomenon
of a painting
somehow feeling
more embodied
than a drawing
Flesh (Pain Thing)
or like Mark
Bradford
said
if it’s
on canvas
it’s a painting
I disagree
it’s a pain
thing
if it’s a
painting it’s
a pain thing
Brice Marden, 2 Red Rocks 5, 2000-02. Ink on paper, 15 X 20 inches.
What I Look for in
a painting
is when
we become
background
and it fore-
ground
or the feeling
that something
has entered
the room
or our homely
domain
and reveals
its own
and that
the two are
connected
like turning
a corner
into a room
filled with
stones on
the bottom
of the ocean
Clement Greenberg
there is
always
an image
meaning
perception
separates
off a
terrain
and even
if there
is nothing
there
calls it
nothing
or the image
of nothing
such that
abstraction
cannot
exist as
mere surface
or material
material
paint
paint
but is
always
a set of
coordinates
circumscribing
an action
of materials
or an image
so that
it is more
accurate
to say
that a plane
either mortifies
into flatness
or opens
into depth
and that
this is
the effect
that transcends
the flatness
of representation
which nonetheless
still depends
on an image
Robert Fernandez, Sphinx 7, 2022. Oil and powdered pigment on paper, 22 X 30 inches.
Nebraska
I wanted to
make a poem
about Nebraska
I wanted it
to be green
but then at
the same
time I was
still involved
with the whole
ambiguity thing
or how you
can be read
a number
of ways
but I figured
I could
just make
the poem
ambiguous
and have it
read as green
also you look
away you look
back and you
can read it
as a gray
and this was
about having
driven across
the country
with a bunch
of friends
and was about
the landscape
of Nebraska
how surprising
and how beautiful
it was
In memory of Brice Marden (1938-2023)
Brice Marden, Nebraska, 1966. Oil and beesewax on canvas, 58 X 72 inches.
