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Making a World Again

  • Writer: sharonkingston
    sharonkingston
  • Apr 24, 2011
  • 2 min read

Making a World Again, 18×18 oil on canvas Atmospheric and Abstract Painting by Sharon Kingston Inspired by the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Last year, shortly after painting Making a World in honor of Earth Day, the Rilke poem which inspired this painting (and the 2011 adaptation shown at left) surfaced in a book I had just purchased by Michael Kimmelman, The Accidental Masterpiece, in a chapter about Pierre Bonnard.  Bonnard lived what some would call a cloistered life largely due to his partner Marthe’s illness.  It is from this circumscribed world that he created his fantastical interiors.

Comparing the abstract painter Joan Mitchell’s own self imposed exile to Vetheuil in her later years to Bonnard’s claustrophobic existence, Kimmelman points out the traces of wistfulness in the ecstasy they both brought to the canvas.  He says, “silence and warmth pervade the pictures of both, the warmth and silence of a partially dreamed-up past, which seems sweeter and more precious because it is gone or never was.  Nathan Kernan, a poet who collaborated with Mitchell on a portfolio of prints she made at the end of her life, has recounted an episode, shortly before she died, when she asked him to select poems to read at a friend’s funeral.  When he read Rainer Maria Rilke’s Entrance to her, she said, “Save that one for me.”  So he did, for her memorial.  And it also speaks to Marthe’s effect on Bonnard.”

Joan Mitchell, After April

Making a World (Entrance)

Whoever you may be, step into the evening Step out of the room where everything is known Whoever you are your house is the last before the far off With your eyes, which are almost too tired to free themselves from the familiar You slowly take one black tree and set it against the sky slender, alone. And you have made a world. It is big and like a word, still ripening in silence And though your mind would fabricate its meaning Your eyes tenderly let go of what they see.

Pierre Bonnard, Le Nu Gris

 
 
 

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    Sharon Kingston is a Bellingham WA (Washington) based artist.  As an oil painter she uses the properties of her medium to create paintings that respond to both the atmosphere of her surroundings and poetry. This method of looking inward and outward and, in the moments of painting, finding her way on the canvas is her approach to creating paintings infused with poetry and the memory of landscape. The atmospheric element of her work is a testament to her desire to create spaces that are undefined, contemplative and allow room to reflect and accept uncertainty. Poetry, by nature open ended, is used both in the conceptualization of the work and as a part of the studio practice. The words of Rainer Rilke have informed Sharon’s work for many years, but she also turns to contemporary poetry when it resonates with her life. She uses layers of transparent color, reveals forms by concealing and unearthing pentimenti and suggests elements of landscape in her process.

    People describe her paintings as ethereal, atmospheric, contemplative, PNW inspired, and filled with light and mood.  She has a storefront art studio in downtown Bellingham and welcomes you view her paintings in person.

    SHARON KINGSTON STUDIO

    203 PROSPECT ST

    Bellingham WA  98225

    studio gallery 
    open by appointment

    please send me a text with the
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    360-739-2474

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