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Showing posts with label watercolors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label watercolors. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

SPILLED WATERCOLORS

by Diane Elayne Dees



Tweeted by NASA astronaut Jessica Meir from the International Space Station.


From space, the aqua, cream, azure, and cerulean
appear as if blended by a master painter
with an eye for serenity and expansion. I imagine
a second painting, this one bright, yet soft,
with puffs of spoonbill pink and splashes
of sea turtle green streaked across a peaceful
background of bunting indigo. From space,
the Louisiana delta is an impressionist’s dream
of water and feathers and the reflections
of a stippled sky. Up close, the picture tears
at the edges as the coastline rapidly recedes.
The Rusty Blackbird, black bear and Great Blue
fade behind a foreground of erosion and loss.
From space, the watercolors spill a dream-like
beauty onto a canvas teeming with life,
while the landscape shifts precariously,
altering the perspective forever.


Diane Elayne Dees has two chapbooks forthcoming. Her microchap Beach Days is available for download and folding from Origami Poems Project. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

Thursday, January 31, 2019

YOUR OWN PERSONAL HITLER

by Alan Catlin


Pictured above is one of three watercolor paintings attributed to the former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler which were seized by shortly before they were due to go under the hammer on Thursday. “We received an online tip-off that the paintings are fakes,” Patricia Bremer, a police spokeswoman, told journalists. The watercolours had a reserve price of €4,000 (£3,450) each, and the Kloss auction house said interest was expected from collectors in the UK.“In my view they have no artistic value, it's simply adequate craftsmanship,” Hans-Joachim Maeder, a spokesman for the auction house said. “If you walk down the Seine and see 100 artists, 80 will be better than this. The value of these objects and the media interest is because of the name at the bottom.” —The Telegraph (UK), January 25, 2019


I thought I might have
dreamed a story I saw on
the eleven o’clock news
until I downloaded the
broadcast on line.

What I heard was,

An auction house in
Europe was selling
watercolors signed by
Hitler.

And while, the general thinking
was, these paintings had "no
artistic merit" whatsoever,
it was thought the signature
would be of major interest.

The auction house hoped
to make a lot of money for
the owners . . .

And I wondered:
Were they planning to advertise?

Possess your very own Hitler.

And if you owned a Hitler,
what would you do with it?

Hang it on a wall?

Store it under lock and key,
only showing it on special occasions . . .

And what would those occasions be?

Your own, personal Hitler.

Think about it.


Alan Catlin has published dozens of chapbooks and full length books, most recently the chapbook Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance (Presa Press), a series of ekphrastic poems responding to the work of German photographer August Sander who did portraits of Germans before, during, and after both World Wars.