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Boat and Yellow Hills: Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947), n.d., oil on canvas, 77.4 x 91.44 cm; image by Ed Bierman, 15 August 2013 (Oakland Museum of California)
Melodious liquid warble in the plum
Tree tells the sinking year how to feel
Its recession into grief as if a thorn
Poked a nester in an old wounded heart
Of stone from which slowly drips recognition
All breathing passion far above
These days atonal as white noise
Through bare branches cotton clouds drift by
Last yellowed leaves catch lone rays of sun
Going down into the motherless ocean
A light plane buzzes off toward brown hills
As shade drops over the next urban plot
To prepare the air for what the dead don’t know
How swiftly we are coming to join them
Pink Trees: Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947), 1919, oil on board, 35.56 x 43.18 cm (private collection)
Stinson Beach: Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947), 1919, oil on board, 30.48 x 41.27 cm (Oakland Museum of California)
Spring: Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947), 1928, oil on canvas; image by Molly, 21 December 2007 (de Young Museum, San Francisco)
Spring: Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947), 1928, oil on canvas; image by Allie_Caulfield, 8 October 2011 (de Young Museum, San Francisco)
Spring (detail): Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947), 1928, oil on canvas; image by Janey Moffat, 12 May 2007 (de Young Museum, San Francisco)
Spring (detail): Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947), 1928, oil on canvas; image by sftrajan, 5 July 2011 (de Young Museum, San Francisco)
Spring (detail): Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947), 1928, oil on canvas; image by sftrajan, 5 July 2011 (de Young Museum, San Francisco)
Spring (detail): Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947), 1928, oil on canvas; image by sftrajan, 7 February 2011 (de Young Museum, San Francisco)
Spring (detail): Selden Connor Gile (1877-1947), 1928, oil on canvas; image by sftrajan, 5 July 2011 (de Young Museum, San Francisco)
How beautifully dead-on, Tom--both the poem and the paintings.
ReplyDeleteWords calculated to arouse even the moribund...
ReplyDeleteTom,
ReplyDeleteWell,we're swift at something then..that knowledge,nearly lifted my spirits,before the long undue period of self-interest laid them to rest in a grave not far away from my own, perhaps.
Dead-on as Vassilis says
This is just plain beautiful. Pain beautiful, too.
ReplyDeleteNin really speaks my mind here. It's wonderful to be reminded again of Gile, whom I first learned about here. Atonal/tonal has been on my mind this morning. Also, since our snowstorm last night, white noise. Curtis
ReplyDeleteMany thanks all.
ReplyDeleteDeath is perhaps the mother of beauty, as has been rumoured.
But where then does pain fit in the picture?
Here's to palliative care for the Millennium, if not the Millennials.
Selden Gile worked locally, hereabouts. Remembered now as a colorist.
On the other hand...
some loose bits of white noise
Wounded, beautiful music.
ReplyDeleteFirst time I've seen the paintings. A great urge to see them in the flesh (that seems a very apposite word). Always a joy to trace the work in a work. I could eat that paint up and leave the canvas clean.
Beautiful, goddamned heart-punch poem and stunning paintings... great pairing!!!
ReplyDeleteThough obviously Selden Gile was aware of French painting and in particular Impressionism and able make use of its discoveries, it's the fact he brought those methods "back home" to this neck of the woods, and to landscapes as familiar to the eye of one living here over time as, say, the landscapes of France must have been to those inhabiting the "country" of Corot or Van Gogh, that makes him of great interest to me.
ReplyDeleteThat delicious thick agitated impasto of his deserves seeing up close, it seemed to me.