Everyday Viral

Roller Coaster is another of the Make Spoken Word Go Viral prompts – to write something inspired by a painting – as I was thinking ‘Everyday’ came up in my iPhoto screen saver program – random images come up every five or six minutes. How clear a sign do I need?

you are here

During poetry month last year I was ‘triggered’ to go into my past & dug out a folio of several old paintings I had done in the mid-70’s. I wrote about some of them then (links at bottom of post). In 2013 I managed to do a poem & photo, a day – this year not so good. But good enough for me too.

I did dozens of these paintings – in very thin fast drying latex. Gave many of them away as gifts, one to Malcolm Ross at Dalhousie who helped get book of poetry published but later opined that coming out wasn’t suitable material for the market.

lights in the sky

‘Everyday’ as a title is a reference to Buddy Holly’s song with the line ‘going faster than a roller coaster.’ The image has elements that I worked with often – the playful gods, the red guitar, the ocean, mountains & nods to real works of art (crows over cornfield).

sawed off

I mention my only real memory of working on the painting – creating the trellis – otherwise that’s it – my frame of mind, intent are in that paint brush. I did have a fascination with mystery, with making the viewer find a story within a surreal landscape.

hard work at Loyalist