When I am moved to sketch someone, I reflect deeply on their situation and travel a little of their journey with them. Nowadays I reach a likeness with great difficulty and much rubbing out and re-doing – so I no longer do it professionally – or very rarely! It is a labour of love.
This soldier with his child or grandchild was a long road this morning. For a long time it would not come right. Approaching the likeness, it just began to breathe – it is never exact; but then I could let it be: the road with him, so travelled – the connection is honoured. I pondered soldiers I have known – their families, their destiny, their duties, and whom they have to protect; and what it is like to be a soldier in today’s civil-war zones, when hell breaks out in one’s own soul at what is done and seen. I had to stick more paper on, for his hands and the way the child rests on him. He has been written all over: the child is still an “empty” book, and was easy to draw. Portraits are windows of the soul.
The following poem is his. It is by John Coyote – a veteran of Vietnam and Iraq. He knows and tells it from inside, through ways of love: the passion to be kind to each other in the human family paradox. Here is the link to his work. I love this poem, recently posted:
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An empty book.
A Poem by Coyote Poetry
“Need to enjoy life. A good life is many friends and a lot of laughter.”
The great writer’s lived their life with gusto and no fear.
You can read in their stories a life filled with sadness and happiness.
Kosinski roamed Europe as a youth learning the truth about the nature of man.
Neruda wrote about love with experience of knowing the paradise of the kiss
and tender touch.
Gibran wrote with love and kindness. Trying to teach the world a better way.
Open new doors of friendship. Have long conversation about everything.
Need to dance on the edges of pleasures and take what we can from the gift of love.
Learn from regret and move on to better places.
Forgive the people who hurt you and try to seek forgiveness from mistakes made.
Stand with the clouds on top of the splendor of the powerful mountains.
Don’t surrender to fear.
Work and money is part of life. Can’t take worldly things with us.
Love and friendship are what will matter when death is upon us. A complete book is filled with pleasure, pain and story of family, laughter and
great journey. Today is a new day. Enjoy life. Be kind and make a new friend. Coyote
© 2013 Coyote Poetry
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We meet across blog-land … making friends. That is the wonder and transmission of this creative global medium.
And now a collection of my own, from old photos. Some of these – whose names I do not know – were done for a humanitarian society.
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The lady in red below, was a child prodigy on the harpsichord until repetitive stress forced her to take her life apart – a born Aries however: courage. She too is a freedom fighter. She became a very interesting artist.
GALLERY
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Here is Ros’s story. Because she is allergic to paint, she uses strange gritty materials to touch her human essences into life, like sounds from piano keys. Her portraits and inner landscapes look like rocks. Each individual is instantly recognised by all his or her friends. They are her sensual life. Her life is painfully allergic, destroying her hands’ mobility. Her psyche is playful, smearing water and the sands of time.
She was a lonely and gifted child in Lancashire. She ran out of the house and talked to bundled up shoppers and babies at the bus stop, because she was curious about human beings.
The soul’s DNA through the afterlife glows in a magical horse’s eyes. She worked the horse’s head from wax and dental dust. It seems to canter eternally by the sea; it emerges through the mist. Her creativity thrives on accidentals, and on a wash of mud with sky. Rocks, essences – her finger pads. A local miracle, tenderly placed, transcends the public galleries “out there”. The wider world is not aware of Ros, because she had to give up her music career, but her circle of friends are touched and gilded with her vibrant, bare faced honesty. When she has an exhibition, those ruthlessly exposed rocks on the mantelpiece come to life. They arrive from the street outside. As human beings – her friends – they struggle down the stairs – some of them are very old – and into the room for biscuits and tea, to greet, to recognise, to appraise and perhaps to buy one another.
When I met Ros in 1987, her scarlet specs matched her lipstick. She inspired my odyssey, because she had twenty years of psychoanalysis, and talked to me openly about it. Her frustrations and adventures with her demons, her frailty and the playful gleam in her eye, gave me the courage to turn around and look at mine.
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I searched all over the house for the drawing she did of my head, like a rock on the mantel piece, but cannot yet find where I put it. Maybe tomorrow. Meanwhile, here is a drawing I did for her:
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.
All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/