Thursday, January 21, 2010

Wilderness underfoot



Excerpt from Vegetation:

It is a love in darkness wrought obedient
to the unseen sun,
longer than memory,
a thought
deeper than the graves of time.

~Kathleen Raine


Green

by D H Lawrence

The dawn was apple green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.

She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone
For the first time,
now for the first time seen.

18 comments:

LDahl said...

I really love the idea of The Green Man, but I wondered why you never see a Green Woman. Was she like the Ent Wives, lost?
The Green Man was of trees, the Green Woman would be of Earth, I think. Buried, waiting, watching.

gatheringwonder said...

wow - stunning piece - well done

LDahl said...

dthaase, Thank you!:)

wildharmonic said...

Beautiful work! I was thinking exactly what you commented about, wondering about the Green Woman. What I thought of was that if the Green Man was the trees (the Ents - great connection), then the Green Woman was everything else. So maybe the Ent Wives weren't so much lost as forgotten. Ouch, that story was already heartbreaking enough without that angle!

LDahl said...

Ajikas, I love your blog, it is so very rich. I just watched Steven Jobs commencement address. It was inspiring and gave me the boost I need right now in my life to embrace what is coming in the next week or so. I'm so thankful you posted it.
We should get our heads out of the clouds every now and then and look at our feet. There is also a world there, it is the duality of both the clouds and the land that fills us with creativity. Ying and yang as it were. So maybe the story of the Ents isn't so sad, they are surrounded by their wives at all times, they just need to open their eyes and then open them again.

Anton Elohan Byers said...

Perhaps not buried, but integral, emergent as silent nexus, voice as susurrus...

LDahl said...

Anton, I like that! :) Susurrus is such a pretty word isn't it? Your comment sounded like poetry.

Anton Elohan Byers said...

BTW, a beautiful piece. It would go so well on my blog. But then I'm sure it would go well in many places...

andrea said...

Words painting colours. I'm listening so hard I can almost taste it.

LDahl said...

Anton,what a special thing to say.Feel free to use it if you wish.:)

Andrea, your comment is exactly why I admire and respect you so very much.

Andrew Finnie said...

Wow, this is beautiful work. Lovely textures, nice contrast between skin and leaf! Thanks for sharing this one as it gives food for thought....

simon said...

yes it is really stunning. Wonderful work Lilah!

LDahl said...

Thank you Andrew and Simon. I did this years and years ago. I was reading D. H . Lawrence and when I found his poem I had to try and put my feelings into some type of illustration. I had of course read Tolkein by that time and had wondered why there was never a depiction of green women, and there really isn't to this day. They are lost. If all humans were gone in a moment, the wilderness would waste no time returning, we forget we are a part of that wildness, an extension of it. It is always there waiting, buried around us, as vital as ever.

neena maiya (guyana gyal) said...

What amazing work. I came here the other night, stayed a while looking at this painting, couldn't comment because of slow connection.

This painting reminds me very much of Jamaica. I can almost smell the mountains with the fallen leaves, the damp earth, a river nearby.

LDahl said...

GG, thank you for this comment, I like that you could catch the smell of earth. I think you really understand this one. :)
I'm thinking of you every day, I know this is a sad time for you. Here is to a good and healing spring.

Chuang Shyue Chou said...

This is evocative. There is a certain quality about it that is timeless and yet, hard to really place and describe.

Chuang Shyue Chou said...

And your mastery of colours...

LDahl said...

Hey Chuang! This was a happy surprise to hear from you again. Glad you seemed to like this little piece! I just got a new set of Gouache colors last night...can't wait to try them out... I think I was 17 when I got my last set and it served me well...but it is now down to the remnants. It was time for a new set and it was on sale:))))