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Description
Dipping a brush into the paint,
I paint a broad stroke on the canvas,
Followed by another streak of color.
Line and curve flows from the brush.
I stipple down shadow and light
And soon from off the canvas glances a face.

How one can form a face
Out of stretched fabric and paint
Is amazing.  In this dim light,
The eyes glisten, free of the canvas
Texture, wet and clear, no brush
Strokes visible, irises deep with rich color.

I am pulled into these limpid color
Pools of my own creation, set deep in this face
That my hands translated from brain to brush
And set down in paint,
Spreading it thin and thick over the canvas.
Working feverishly in the light,

I cast my strokes down in the light,
Covering brush, canvas, shirt and hands all with color
Flecks here, blotches there, moving this pigment around the canvas,
With brush, hands, stylus, to make a face.
All my tools save my hands are abandoned to commune with paint,
Not trusting this distance imposed by a brush.

And so, off to one side sits the brush,
Sitting, laden with raw sienna beneath the light
Tuned to mimic the sun, revealing the true tones of the paint,
Rather than adding its own layer of color,
An artificial green or yellow, turning the face
Sallow, bilious, sullying the image now on the canvas.

I stare fixedly at the canvas.
I reach past the brush
And instead grab the turpentine, to clean off the brush, to scrape off the face
Pigments, which mix and muddy under the distanced light.
The subtle, limpid tones of the iris becoming one opaque color
Before being hosed and wiped off, a shower of paint.

The canvas sits empty under the light,
The brush cleaned of residual color,
And face now again only paint.

Description
Dipping a brush into the paint,
I paint a broad stroke on the canvas,
Followed by another streak of color.
Line and curve flows from the brush.
I stipple down shadow and light
And soon from off the canvas glances a face.

How one can form a face
Out of stretched fabric and paint
Is amazing.  In this dim light,
The eyes glisten, free of the canvas
Texture, wet and clear, no brush
Strokes visible, irises deep with rich color.

I am pulled into these limpid color
Pools of my own creation, set deep in this face
That my hands translated from brain to brush
And set down in paint,
Spreading it thin and thick over the canvas.
Working feverishly in the light,

I cast my strokes down in the light,
Covering brush, canvas, shirt and hands all with color
Flecks here, blotches there, moving this pigment around the canvas,
With brush, hands, stylus, to make a face.
All my tools save my hands are abandoned to commune with paint,
Not trusting this distance imposed by a brush.

And so, off to one side sits the brush,
Sitting, laden with raw sienna beneath the light
Tuned to mimic the sun, revealing the true tones of the paint,
Rather than adding its own layer of color,
An artificial green or yellow, turning the face
Sallow, bilious, sullying the image now on the canvas.

I stare fixedly at the canvas.
I reach past the brush
And instead grab the turpentine, to clean off the brush, to scrape off the face
Pigments, which mix and muddy under the distanced light.
The subtle, limpid tones of the iris becoming one opaque color
Before being hosed and wiped off, a shower of paint.

The canvas sits empty under the light,
The brush cleaned of residual color,
And face now again only paint.