Millions of years ago, man saw its first rainbow...since then his eyes has been looking for the color of beauty everywhere...
Brushes, palettes and…here and there many times hard squeezed colors tubes in disarray.
Then…the canvas.
White, devoid of sketches, of shadows, waiting for the first streak of red like quivering flesh awaits the murderous assault of the blade.
Inside the tubes a multitude of rainbows, greener forest than those found in the Amazon, the deepest Congo or the jungles of Cambodia.
Gentler gold than those found in Siam’s Golden pagodas, the sands of Sahara or in the heart of Klondike mines.
Yellow, as it of the dividing China river which if you where there once, found that the yellow of the Yangtze river is light brown with a touch of saffron, but yellow it is in everybody’s imagination.
Blue, the deep blue that decors the royal cape, the sky of early spring’s late afternoons when the cold of winter hasn’t decided to call it quits. The blue of the Danube River described to a blind girl asking if the river color was so breathtaking.
Browns, all kinds of it. Like the hard and dry around Alice Spring in Australia, to the wet and dark that bogged you down when the monsoon rains poured around your feet in Vietnam while Charlie added to the rain the snipers fire around your ears.
The brown of dry blood on a soldier’s bandage, or the brown assaulting the only picture of your long lost family, that infamous brown that makes everything to fade away.
White, don’t forget the white color, symbolizing innocence and also giving a kind of respect to those little white lies, which aren’t so bad if they didn’t hurt so much.
White is the color for children’s baptism, and the death shroud.
Also, white is the color, which gets dirty because we cannot let it alone. We are an enormous emotional spry-can with a heart full of graffiti.
White never had a chance.
The painter will go through the colors with creative madness, taking fancy of this one or that other.
He will smear his palettes with thousand dying rainbows.
But he will forget black…don’t forget black!!!
BLACK is not a color; it is a state of mind.
Of the shadows and despair, that only solitude likes because it offers a hiding place.
Sometimes when the painter uses black he isn’t mourning, he is utterly enraged because he can’t find a red powerful enough to make the canvas bleed after trying to paint a stabbed light.
Black is the color of midnight hours that you find in the deepest recess inside the voids of a silent clock.
You don’t paint black…you hide the light.
Then the rage is gone, the sadness and the solitude leaving an empty room full of empty spaces with a lonely canvas, waiting.
The hands, pounding before like two hammers, are now two delicate butterflies tracing the contours of a face, not quite yet deciding what kind of smile the eyes should have.
But back those eyes; he will paint the reflecting lights of a secret garden full with hiding flowers and whispering voices.
Transparent pale blues in the roses tears, perhaps a bird looking down with curiosity from the top of an apple tree.
Painting dreams, holding the wind in your hands trying to remember what you can’t forget.
Artistic write with a true rendering. Artists are unique and each one to his own way of seeing things. What you paint cannot be forgotten and lives on and on.
I loved this! I especially liked the lines "you don't paint black...you hide the light." and the part about the stabbed light. Your descriptions just brought everything to life.
Enjoyed reading this story of colors and silence. Creative, poetic, insightful. Loved the metaphors and similes of the colors. Especially liked "...white is the color, which gets dirty because we cannot let it alone. We are an enormous emotional spray-can with a heart full of graffiti.
White never had a chance."
and
"BLACK is not a color; it is a state of mind." - David
Reviewed by LadyJtalks LadyJzTalkZone
10/11/2007
good write, the first stroke is always the hardest. Lady J
Your colorful story left me "green" with envy! Thank you for your service to our country. Because of patriots like you ... all of us can see rainbows and wish for the proverbial pot of gold at the end of them.
The painter, like a poet, has colors to create life as the poet does with a multitude of words. Nice imagery in the mixture of colors that you have chosen for your canvass.
A very touching and powerful write my friend..profound indeed, lingers on one's thoughts. I agree with Karen, Bravo is in order! BRAVO!!
Blessings,
Joyce B.
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