A Mythology Reflects Its Region.

A mythology reflects its region. Here
In Connecticut, we never lived in a time
When mythology was possible -- But if we had --
That raises the question of the image's truth.
The image must be of the nature of its creator.
It is the nature of its creator increased,
Heightened. It is he, anew, in a freshed youth
And it is he in the substance of his region,
Wood of his forest and stone out of his fields
Or from under his mountain.

—Wallace Stevens, A Mythology Reflects Its Region.

Of course it is not "about" this anymore than it is about any particular narrative. I hope it exists for itself as painting.

Paintings In Order of Stations

Select for larger image.

The paintings follow the form of the Stations more than the specific content.

My own figure who I've called Crispin after the Wallace Stevens poem, The Commedian with the letter "C". It is about the impossibility or difficulty of this type of depiction. The figure blends with a Walt Whitman like representation walking the Bay Beach wondering or wandering through the reeds, leaves or grass.

It's finally about the painting. Here there is a mystery of different spaces-- colliding and ordering themselves, into positive and negative surfaces.

Commedian as the letter "C"

Here follows some lines from a long poem by Wallace Stevens.



Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil.

What counted was mythology of self

Could Crispin stem verboseness in the sea

The salt hung on his spirit like a frost,

some starker, barer self

Crispin
Became an introspective voyager.

Crispin beheld and Crispin was made new.

He came. The poetic hero without palms
Or jugglery, without regalia.
And as he came he saw that it was spring,

His western voyage ended and began.

Was he to bray this in profoundest brass

Scrawl a tragedian's testament?

proving what he proves
Is nothing, what can all this matter since
The relation comes, benignly, to its end?

1 through 7 and bottom row 8 through 14

The top are 1 through 7 and bottom row 8 through 14.

and new step

A Sketch

The "place" of the American Poem

It has been said the 'place' of American poetry--Is the beach, the line between the land and sea.

Im using the East Hampton, Long Island, Bay Beach and Ocean here.

Here is Stevens in Decorations in a -- Cemetery


In the far South the sun of autumn is passing
Like Walt Whitman walking along a ruddy shore.
He is singing and chanting the things that are part of him,
The worlds that were and will be, death and day.
Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end.
His beard is of fire and his staff is a leaping flame.

William Penn

Something strange I've just discovered. I had to go back to PA to get my birth certificate a few years ago.
These images are from the State Museum we used to be taken to as a boy in Pennsylvania.

Different images of another Hero

From a little museum in Taos, NM.



In a dress, as a farmer, looking like the Quaker William Penn of my own youth in Pennsylvania --from cartoon to tragic. Many figures seem to blend to one.

Formal step

Blocking the stained canvas with masking tape.