Shadows

I've been thinking of shadows lately. Some recently observed shadows around the house:

I came across a book of Sylvia Plimack Mangold's paintings two summers ago, and her floor paintings documenting simple patterns of shadow and light keep coming to mind these days:

Sylva Plimack Mangold, "Floor with Light at 10:30 am" (1972), acrylic on canvas 52 x 61 in/132 x 155 cm (Image courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York)

Some weeks back, I saw a beautiful group of watercolors by John Singer Sargent at the MFAH, but this one in particular struck me:

John Singer Sargent, "La Biancheria", Watercolor, 40.32 x 52.71 cm, 1910

Earlier this month, I kayaked through Armand Bayou with a friend and visited another in Waco where I walked along the wooded edge of the Brazos River--two places where light and shadow had such a physical presence for me. These words came to mind after returning home:


She came to hear an artist speak,

          but God spoke.

He spoke through a blind woman who led her through the spotted shadows along the river’s edge--

          the “places of rest within life.”



She sat beneath a shadow just two days prior

          on the surface of a southern bayou,

and the peace filled her like the water in the palette dipped at the boat’s side

          as she traced edges of trunks and leaves.



The leaves whose spaced placements created dazzling dancing patterns along the kitchen wall

          when she woke up the day before,

and whose remains lie scattered today amid the discarded flower petals of a spring wind

          into arrangements calculated carefully not by she.


(Written May 6, 2014)