roses

Roses; epilogue

My rose text is done. Strange how one can work for weeks on a text which ends up at 567 words. But that’s how it is. For me, anyway. I have written this text on commission, it’s going into an exhibition catalogue. The text is written to a series of large-scale rose-drawings, pencil drawings in…

Hothouse

Here I am; reading, thinking & writing about roses, and then suddenly this poem comes along – almost as on demand … Hothouse A rose, rose. A violet, violet. A jade, jade. No. The architecture of each, a refusal. Rose is not rose nor violet violet nor jade jade. But each is what it is,…

reading up & sketching down; roses in art (cont.) Vincent van Gogh: Still Life: Vase with Roses (1890) Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90) is more famous for sunflowers, irises and blazing cherry blossom: but still his pale roses, incandescent against a pale green wall, is amongst my favorites. The flowers are in bright, exuberant bloom, their furled forms animated by…

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May …

reading up & sketching down; roses in art ….? Some historical fragments: Botanical symbolism has its origin in the literature of antiquity, where plants are often used in metaphors for virtue and vice. In classical mythology, human beings are transformed into plants as a reward or punishment, as in the story of Narcissus, the vain…