Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Tell-tale Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was time,
and we took our time to find it; whereupon

it was defined by its absence,
decreasing supply -

an absolute need for additional time.
By then we'd made time's value high,

and the value of using it too.
LaoTsu said: To live long, be of no use -

My time contracts; its uses for me
expand. I'll see no end, until

The.


Ravenna Taylor, Heat Waves #11, 2012, watercolor, gouache, color pencil, 8 x 10 inches


Friday, July 13, 2012

Either Way

sometimes I wish to confess
sometimes I might succumb
sometimes I am too small
I swim in my self-made lake of aspirations
short of respiration, buoyed by inspirations
all of it, everything, lapping
at an edge I might not reach
I lack
I swim
without my glasses 
I'm nearsighted

Ravenna Taylor, "Either Way," 2012, oil on linen over wood, 5 x 7 inches

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Stepping Stones

Last week I completed a drawing, and it happened to be the last page in a sketchbook I'd been keeping since 1996. I keep multiple books, of course, so that's how one can last so long. I thought it might be interesting to post the entire sequence of 24 drawings; these are not great photos, but just an animation, of sorts, of my visual development. If one were to go to my website [here], whether the "paintings" section or the "work on paper," it would be readily seen how many of these correspond to works in oil or collage -- although in some cases, drawings are made after the fact, as a way of moving on from that image into another.