Sometimes a painting starts as one thing and becomes something else entirely. The two Time paintings below began as close-up waves, but after studying them for a while I thought they were more like views one might see through a telescope. So I sent them on a long voyage. By the time I returned to the studio to work on them, they had become meditations on time – how variable it is. One result of working on all these miniature paintings is another poem, which you will find at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!
Contraction
The world shrinks
and I must paint each day
a little smaller.
Tiny brushes, miniature panel,
magnifying lens. A single drop
of oil to thin the paints.
Flawed data doesn’t reduce.
Accuracy matters, even
at this smaller scale.
My mostly modest output
will soon require a telescope
and a microscope.
The atom is the shortest route
to where I’m going.
I like the art very much, and the poem is wonderful!
Telescope to microscope… the alpha and the omega.