***
There is no oil,
No varnish,
No easel,
No trace of linear perspective.
There is no sketching,
No sponges,
No preparation.
There is no, no, no –
There is no to a story.
There is a flash of a candle on paper.
There is a charcoal’s shadow.
There is chestnut earth,
Gesso inglese,
Korean ink,
Masonite, merely
The materials of nature,
Left to present your message,
Unadorned and straightfully painful.
There is the alphabet of invented letters
That erupts from your memory –
A curved line when asleep,
Like the horizon, a quiet twist,
Derived from trees and mountain rocks,
The arches of ancient Roman halls.
The swirls that dominate your language
Suggest a ‘resurrection’!
The s-lines are the gracefulness
Of vases
From China or Tchaikovsky’s swans.
They glide along so smoothly on the canvas,
The pyramidal lines of Egypt, of the Dolomites.
There is a strength of verticality:
The alfas, betas
Layered
As the notes in the chords,
They stay alone
But sound as a whole…
(Painting “Alfabeto” by Sara Maino)
