Curator Notes
We commissioned poet Karen Holden to compose a response to this painting. This is her poem:
Quartet for Desert Moon
Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight. Orhan Pamuk
I. Expectation
Moon, where are you?
Hidden in one, two, three, stark trees
Filtering through a brutal desert sky, a spiky
Desert washed blood red, torn against sharp
Black stones, in the claret-stained night
No fuzzy thumbprint, no cool clear light
Just hard shards, the sharp shards of a cracked heart
Silence and the dulling absence of reflection
Barren desert of cactus, of stone, red sand, pink
Bloom and the moon, diminished
Where is the moon, desert?
Where is that sober, milky light?
Maybe it’s all moon, scraped and shaped by time
A terrain of absence, of waiting in the quiet
Missing moon, making what is present, alive
II. Conversation
Rothko’s red painting, titled “white”
Absent black, floating red, the canvas sighs
Not harmony, but balance
The bruised red of late apples, persimmon and rose
Voices in a hushed room volley
Across the Hoffman, the Motherwell, the Kline
The memory of Matisse’s red room, his own
Discourse with the moon seeping into everyone
III. Inspiration
Approach is everything
Tear the old to paper the new
It starts with red
And then the darkness follows
Finding something in nothing
Making something from nothing
Relationship is everything
In painting and in life
You taught them all
To be bold, not to lie, to stare
The image straight in the eye
Not to flinch in a fight
From outside to inside, the moon
Slides, lighting the studio, where
Your own hard rhythms rise
The red of blood, not fire, the black of night
IV. Revelation
You must get close, and wait
As close as the sky-hidden moon will allow
A stark red desert, night-folded trees
Invisible force of the wind, blunt light
Burnished, but not bright
Not the cool articulate moon, only moonlight
On serrated stones and what’s missing: morning
Horizon, plain, the rest flat crimson and black
Shooting upward out of the frame
Or simply: Paper. Canvas. Paint.
© 2013 Karen Holden
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Quartet for Desert Moon
Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight. Orhan Pamuk
I. Expectation
Moon, where are you?
Hidden in one, two, three, stark trees
Filtering through a brutal desert sky, a spiky
Desert washed blood red, torn against sharp
Black stones, in the claret-stained night
No fuzzy thumbprint, no cool clear light
Just hard shards, the sharp shards of a cracked heart
Silence and the dulling absence of reflection
Barren desert of cactus, of stone, red sand, pink
Bloom and the moon, diminished
Where is the moon, desert?
Where is that sober, milky light?
Maybe it’s all moon, scraped and shaped by time
A terrain of absence, of waiting in the quiet
Missing moon, making what is present, alive
II. Conversation
Rothko’s red painting, titled “white”
Absent black, floating red, the canvas sighs
Not harmony, but balance
The bruised red of late apples, persimmon and rose
Voices in a hushed room volley
Across the Hoffman, the Motherwell, the Kline
The memory of Matisse’s red room, his own
Discourse with the moon seeping into everyone
III. Inspiration
Approach is everything
Tear the old to paper the new
It starts with red
And then the darkness follows
Finding something in nothing
Making something from nothing
Relationship is everything
In painting and in life
You taught them all
To be bold, not to lie, to stare
The image straight in the eye
Not to flinch in a fight
From outside to inside, the moon
Slides, lighting the studio, where
Your own hard rhythms rise
The red of blood, not fire, the black of night
IV. Revelation
You must get close, and wait
As close as the sky-hidden moon will allow
A stark red desert, night-folded trees
Invisible force of the wind, blunt light
Burnished, but not bright
Not the cool articulate moon, only moonlight
On serrated stones and what’s missing: morning
Horizon, plain, the rest flat crimson and black
Shooting upward out of the frame
Or simply: Paper. Canvas. Paint.
© 2013 Karen Holden