Walk down to the shore
the lake will talk with you.
It will soothe and heal.
Magic is all around
in the trees and water
in the wind and sun.
I wanted to commune all day
Duty called, I had to leave.
Now I must listen more carefully.
Not now young, but not worn out.
When I hear the birds I know.
Still I wonder what they say.
Our bodies become what we are.
We are beautiful. Through the open window
the breeze casts its spell.
When I was 17.
My 17th year
was not much like
Frank Sinatra’s description.
An unrelatable song to me.
At 17.
My 17th year
was a lot more like
Janis Ian described hers.
A distressingly relatable song.
When I was 17.
I might have been hiding
from the light on the village green,
but not with small town girls
or ones from the big city.
At 17.
There were valentines
that never came, and
my name was not called
when choosing sides for
basketball.
When I was 17,
if
the soft summer nights
on the village green
had been different,
more like Frank’s,
Or at 17,
if like Janis,
I wasn’t inventing lovers
on the phone
that called to say
come dance with me,
I might have determined,
when I was 17,
that I had arrived.
But
I was just a kid.
The last few years I have been exploring the world of monotypes and have gone down some interesting paths. I find the medium is a really good place for me to play with color and shape.
Throughout my career, I keep coming back to the human figure over and over again. The figures in these prints made from drawings that I did last week in a session with a live model.
I used six 6″ x 8″ plates on these monotypes. They provide me with natural divisions through which I can adjust color, value and texture in a way that I can control very specifically and have it feel comfortably random. The multiple plates also divide up the picture plane in a way that I find pleasing in the same way I have been dividing the trees up in my oil paintings on canvas.
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I watched my cat attack her tail,
She didn’t recognize it as her own.
It was comical.
As humans, somewhat superior beings,
or so we think,
we can’t imagine being so unaware.
Until I stop and look at my own hands.
Who’s in control here?
There is no confusion about whose they are.
I see they are attached to my arms, directly to my body,
They are obviously mine.
Without me telling them how,
they twist and grip, hold and push.
They just do it.
The radio was just blabbing about artificial intelligence.
Who’s in charge here?
A pilot told me the artificial horizon is better than the real one.
Artificial intelligence is potentially better than real too.
But what about our hands?
I learned about muscles and nerves in school,
That the impulses from my brain
direct my fingers.
Those impulses are invisible to me.
Who’s in charge here?
My cat still chases her tail.
I am as entertained by the things my hands
know how to do.
Typing these letters for instance,
I think the words, but my hands
seem to know how to spell.
My cat still chases her tail.
Who’s so superior now?
Royce Deans