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Posts Tagged ‘Edgar Allan Poe’

Hold Back the Night

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , on December 16, 2020| 3 Comments »

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

This is another new small piece that is headed to the West End Gallery this weekend. I am finally hitting some responsive chords in my work and feeling a new creative flow building which is reassuring. This recent work has felt great coming out, free and easy without having to stuggle, and I think it shows in the work itself.

It’s all work that appeals to my own sense of what I want to see. 

Maybe what I need to see right now.

That I can’t answer. But this feels good and right so I am pretty happy in the moment.

I am calling it Hold Back the Night after a  favorite song from the 70’s, a cover by Graham Parker and the Rumour of the song of that title which was originally recorded by the Trammps a few years earlier. Very upbeat which matches my current view for my work in the near future.

As I said, pretty happy in the moment.

Of course, tomorrow might be a different story. So, for today, I am going to take in the colors and forms and sing along with Graham. Hope you’ll do the same. Have a good one but be careful out there.

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In Praise of Short Fiction

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 15, 2012| 2 Comments »

I’ve always been a fan of the short story.  I grew up reading the classic short stories of  Guy DeMaupassant, O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe, all beautifully crafted and plotted.   There are short stories by other authore that are lodged deeply in the fabric of my memory, which helped shape how I view the  world.  The will to live of the man struggling against nature in Jack London’s To Start a Fire or the way that love and art changed the lonely characters in Who Am I This Time? from Kurt Vonnegut are two varied examples.

A short story is very much like a painting to me.  They are often complete views of an event or a moment but there is still a lot of room for the reader to fill in the spaces with their own imagination, to allow their own emotional understandings to become part of the tale.  They can be taken in quickly yet often, as I have noted above, the memory lingers on.  Again, like the glance of a painting that stays with you in a haunting way.

I was pleased to come across such a piece of short fiction recently from writer David Terrenoire, a friend I met several years ago through my work.  It’s called After the War and is the story of two lonely souls who momentarily find one another in the area of the steel mills around Pittsburgh of 1948.  I would call the story a poetic tragedy. The writing is spare and direct, giving the piece the feeling of the fable that it is. 

Just a damn fine piece of writing that will stay with you for days after.  And maybe longer.

After the War is available  from Amazon for e-readers.

 

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