Birch Pond in Winter, Original Oil on Canvas
Birch Pond in Winter, Original Oil on Canvas
24″x34″ $250.oo
Exegesis of a painting at the Mill Pond, Richmond Hill ,
Birch Pond in Winter, oil on canvas, by James Kortekaas
Once on The Twilight Zone, a painting
swallowed a person and the person became
a part of the painting, and viewers were
frightened by what they saw in it, not knowing
what it was exactly, that frightened them.
Because it so intrigued them, people came
from far and wide to see the painting, and
the artist’s fame grew.
Yesterday at an art gallery I saw a painting;
it was all white and blue-white and eerie-
pink, devoid of people, defined instead by
the white-black trunks of birch trees and
their bare, grasping branches, for it was
a winter painting, cold, with only a hint
of warmth in the sky’s pinkness, and not
even a set of animal tracks to give life to it.
Impulsively I wanted to leap onto the canvas
and run across its frozen surface where land
and lakeshore met invisibly, or where they
might have met if that was the artist’s
intention. It seemed to me there was at least
a propensity for their meeting, though given
the frigid day and not knowing how thick
the ice, I might have eschewed testing
the integrity of that frozen lake, for I will
declare it frozen . . . instead my own desire
would be for the virginal snow unsullied
by any creature, and I’d have run helter-
skelter across its pristine skin, shouting to
scatter crows – the crows that should have
been atop the birch trees in the painting,
for every tree that’s tall enough should
be home to crows or black birds calling,
and when I run across the snow it ought
to be their wont to fly up in a sudden
rush and whoosh of wings, at least
a hundred of them darkening the skies.
A winter’s day where crows are not
is lacking something, bereft of more
than life, so I would shout at them and
rout them out of there to make it real, and
then suffused with their excitement I’d turn
my thoughts earthward to the untrodden snow
and throw my body down and laugh and roll
in it until each freeze-dried flake is like a diamond
clinging to my hair and clothes and rouging
cheeks and then, as quiet settles over the last
of the black birds’ calls I’d find an untouched
stretch of snow that holds the birch trees
parallel, and make snow angels.
Of course I’d not remain in that cold place
for long, would leave the once-sterile scene
before night fell; being human, not some singular
blend of oil and pigment, there’d be necessity
to retreat to what humans need, to blazing hearth
and warmth; but come morning, and another
day’s first dawning I’d go back for one last
look, and standing there I’d think how much
more interesting now, the painting had become,
with angels’ wings, the shock of footprints
running, and in the distance, the echoing call
of birds just out of sight, beyond the frozen tree line.
©Dina E. Cox 2006
October 29th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Dina… the painting was made to prompt your exegesis. Together, they are as one.