"They wished to flower, and flowering is being beautiful: but we wish to ripen, and that means being dark and taking pains." - Rainer Maria Rilke
Acrylic paint on paper, cotton and silk, with glass, green jasper, paua shell and macaw feathers. About 35 x 35 cm. Private collection.
I quoted Rilke above but this is his poem about a caged panther he observed at the Jardin des Plants:
ReplyDeleteThe Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
Rainer Maria Rilke