Joy Laking
 Gallery

From at Headland on Long Island

The moaning sound of far off gulls pulses.

It is joined by shrill caws,

And the sound escalates and marries.

 

Sunlight grabs onto a bright sap green plant,

Clinging to the cliff.

It glows amid the umber sandstone.

 

The gray bay stretches to the sky.

Two crisp orange and green islands

Rise solidly in front of me.

Sepia islands blend with the water

In the distance,

And wisps of pale mauve islands and headlands

Float on the horizon.

 

The wind blows relentlessly.

Although the sky is clear and sunny,

I am bundled in coat, sweaters

And jeans over pajamas.

 

Still I am weary

From the fierce buffeting.

My hat is tied on

And I am hunkered on my stool.

I clutch my paints, paper and brushes

And try to capture everything.

Well the first weekend of the open house is over and yesterday I hosted my first ever artist chat afternoon.  It was a good time; full of laughs and mutual support.  Eleven folks participated, including Jim and I!  One of the highlights was that Catherine McMillen, an old artist friend from Halifax joined us.  At eighty-two, she is still going strong and credits her painting with keeping her going.

Today I finished up a flower painting that I had wanted to get done for the open house.  Oh well, it will be up on the walls for the second weekend.  It’s so hard to go back to a painting that has been left to sit for a couple of months.  I feel like bursting out and doing something really wild and creative but instead I was trying to invent flowers and leaves that were frosted at least a month ago.  In the end, it’s a peaceful painting that almost seemed to require my old traditional framing instead of the new contemporary molding.

A week of glorious skies-

Day after day, the mortal tries to immortalize.

Some days, I almost succeed.

Painting the colourful cloud-filled vistas

Also means being prepared for light mists

Or a deluge of rain.

When the air smells of moisture,

I take my hat off so that I immediately detect

The shift into ruinous droplets.

When it showers,

I turn my little painting upside down,

I hunker on my stool,

And wait.

Wait for the air to clear,

Or the rain to fall.

In that event, I stuff my fragile damp painting

Into my pack and run for shelter.

There is a peaceful harmony about painting inclement skies.

The painter is tuned to the landscape;

Trying to capture

Pale cerulean on the horizon,

The shift to ultramarine,

The billowing cumulonimbus

In mauves and grays

That are edged with glowing sunshine.

While the painter paints,

God plays.

Curtain Call

For Bill Forbes 1959 to 2009

By Joy Snihur Wyatt Laking

Last night,

(Which for him was truly his last night),

We saw him on stage

Playing a rough, lazy, red-neck hick.

Playing him so convincingly,

We also saw his angst and foibles.

We saw his love of family.

We recognized our local characters,

But not ourselves.

Definitely not ourselves.

In today’s paper, the play’s director,

Writing about his sudden death,

Described him as very steady,

An unassuming guy;

Kind, gentle and friendly.

Is this the roll of an artist

To live all lives?

To explore what it feels

To be a womanizing lout,

While being respectful and reliable?

This was not a life cut short

By accident of crime.

Not even a life cut short 

By natural causes.

This was life cut 

By death at fifty.

Fifty is a reasonable age,

If any age is reasonable.

It’s the babies and twenty year olds,

Both on the cusp of life,

That we mourn.

This world still has countries

Where death at thirty-five is common,

And where artists do not

Write or paint or perform

Because they are

Labouring in fields,

Or languishing in prisons.

It is because I am fifty-nine

And also an artist,

That I feel his death keenly?

Or is it because

My life too may be cut,

Will be cut, by death,

Hopefully not this year.

Perhaps not next year,

With luck maybe not

For thirty-seven years.

But definitely, at some point,

Unplanned and inconvenient,

Or planned and convenient,

My death will come

And my artist’s voice will end.

Until it does,

What do I have to say?

What do I have to lament or celebrate?

The past couple of days, I’ve been painting just up the road at my friend, Laurie Gunn’s, house. This is a treat, because at lunch time, Dan fed me fresh Swiss chard and Laurie made me tea and scones. Laurie also took some pictures of me hunkered in their field.