New Work

'I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.' ~Violette Leduc, Mad in Pursuit

Art Trek 2010: open studios and gallery exhibit

A successful Art Trek open studio event! Thanks all who came out in the summer heat. The gallery exhibit of all 41 artists who participated will be on display through mid August at Upstairs Artspace. I truly appreciate those who came in my house/studio and loved my work.

“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.” ~Chinese proverb

New Work

July finds me painting as hard as I can for the second annual Art Trek event: an open studio tour featuring 41 area artists: myself included! Starting with a preview party at the Upstairs Artspace on July 23 from 5-8 p.m., the open studios are Saturday and Sunday. All artists will have work featured at the gallery for six weeks, so if you miss the tour, you'll be able to stop in to see the show! Here's a sample of new work in progress...enjoy.

New Work

New Work

This painting is one of a pair. Right now, I'm thinking it doesn't need much more, but I'll continue to work on it along with the companion piece. So far, I like it! When I fall in love with a painting, I know it's right. That doesn't always happen....sometimes I go back and redo a piece, and am willing to take a piece on a new journey. Kind of like life, isn't it?

Note: This painting is now available in a fine quality giclee print on stretched canvas: enhanced by me.

Esto Perpetua: Night Spaces

As a recipient of a grant from the Regional Artist Project Grant made through The Arts Council of Henderson County, I wish to thank all who made it possible for me to purchase art supplies to further the “Esto Perpetua” landscape series I have worked on for several years. I wish to return the help I've been given in a concrete, meaningful way. My project was funded, in part, by a Regional Artist Project Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, administered by the Arts Council of Henderson County.

As of April 2010, I have chosen to donate a percentage of each “Esto Perpetua” painting's proceeds to Saluda Community Land Trust which is a tax-exempt non-profit organization dedicated to preserving my town's rural small town character by protecting its unique natural heritage. 90% of private donations to SCLT are dedicated to land and easement acquisition.

About the Esto Perpetua series: started several years ago, the paintings are based around the Latin phrase of 'esto perpetua' (it is forever) which is written within the painting, worked into many transparent layers for the viewer to find and ponder. These canvases, both large and small, are always one of a kind, and depict nature and the sacredness of our earth. No trace of mankind is ever found in these landscapes: only mystery and peacefulness, quiet beauty, a sense of timelessness and spirituality. My belief is that nature is omnipresent, precious, powerful, and sacred. This series has become my language, my message to a world that needs to hear it. While a quiet, contemplative message, I hope it comes across loud and clear.

New Work: Sculpture

Life-size hand-built clay head from a Mike Lalone workshop I did at TFAC....it had been many moons since I'd touched clay....but found I loved the feel, the textures...the finish was experimental: tonal acrylic washes over the fired clay surface, then paste wax, buffed.

"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures." ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Of Spring & Thought

I am spending delightful afternoons in my garden, watching everything living around me. As I grow older, I feel everything departing, and I love everything with more passion. ~ Emile Zola

It is true: how one feels the ticking of time...the shortening days of life...of all things departing, the impermanence, the immediate click of a moment. Living in the now. In spring, the impossible lush greens, the vibrant blooms, the high azure sky...the hum and whir of life all around: you feel it, you inhale it. It makes you dizzy with love for life. As for me, I want to simplify even more now. What matters to me? Not things. All I really want is to be able to create, to paint...to have my dog under my feet, to just live in the day: in the moment, to take this with me. To be honest, I care less and less for the 'real' world: that of incessant cell phones, the jarring blare of talking heads, of people who are insincere or out to use others, of cluttered roads, crowded malls, and over-developed space...I find my salvation in the songs of birds, sweep of breeze, ray of sun warm on my face, the dog's soft ears under my hand, of artistic spirits all over the world, of quiet thought and brush stroke whisper against the canvas. "Make art, live now" it says. As for me, I'm going back to the garden.

The Painting World

"It is not the moon, I tell you. It is these flowers lighting the yard." ~ excerpt from 'Mock Orange' by Louise Glück

Welcome to my blog, paintings, poetry, photography, thoughts, plus those who inspire me and my work daily. Welcome to the front porch swing....visit a moment with me. Come into my art studio...stay awhile. Feel free to touch the brushes...to look around...that is, if you can possibly find your way through the canvases, easels, piles of paint jars. If you're interested in any artwork, let me know: if it's already sold, I still may have another piece comparable. Packing and shipping can easily be arranged, and I accept Paypal, cash, or check. Thank you for visiting! Enjoy.

Poetry & Painting

Colors intertwine, colors unfold before my child’s eyes
and bloom. Colors of sky, earth, all here, between us.
Connecting us.

Suddenly,
I see the color of blue love,
All the colors of love
Rising like startled clouds
Above hills far in the distance
The good earth below, brown and rich.

Excerpt from "Rosa..." by Bonnie Joy Bardos

Esto Perpetua: The Landscape

Featured photo is of my "Esto Perpetua" series...I just got a RAPG grant to purchase materials for the series, which I began several years ago. This is exciting to me: my first grant endeavor! There's more within this blog about my thoughts about the sacredness of nature and the Esto Perpetua landscape series of paintings. Here is another Derek Walcott poem I found today, and enjoyed...hope you will too.

Derek Walcott: excerpt from "In The Village" from White Egrets.

...My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine.

The Landscape

Esto Perpetua: Blue

The Lonely Road Home

On the edge of the darkened wood,
silence falls:
a silk-veil whisper
echoes
through stilted trees standing sentinel along quiet fields.
Here, no whippoorwill remains.

Those undulating fields fold like a prayer: soft into blankets of earth.
Red clay furrows bristle with cornstalk-stitched rows: the little girl walks alone down each row, cornstalks brushing the faded cotton of her dress. She gathers arrowheads in a old coffee can, under blue fall sky.
Shells from ancient seas lie far in the earth beneath her feet.

I, lover of stones, shells, whippoorwills:
meet you on the boundary, the tree-line
of that dark unspoken land
far beyond the line i always knew.

a thousand miles distant
the sea tosses
unsettled, restless
in her bed--
and the summer wasps
tick, tick, tick
against high pine ceilings
in a forlorn clapboard country church
perched on red dust roads that lead into pine-forested shade.

I too, turn, restless
into the waiting haze..
leaves of memory
drift unanchored in the rain of unseen oceans, furrowed red clay fields.

The sea moans low and unyielding-
far, calling me to her.

Mother, I whisper,
oh my mother,
I hear you in the salt of my longings,
the droplets on my face, in the whispers of shells.

Shells twist forlorn in the slow bottom current,
cornstalk shadows underneath.
Clouds roil gray over the water,
the ocean hums
a thousand miles distant,
every word clear.

The heart turns on axis,
gravitating in magnetic pull
to the yearning of shells caught in the sea's depths.

In the call of the vanished whippoorwill,
memory sings loud in the shells
with their red clay hearts,
the rasp of corn stalks under the fall blue sky,
the ticking of summer wasps on that dry pine ceiling.

Oh the lonely road home.

--Bonnie Joy Bardos ©2010

A Bird Rose And Flew Skywards.....

"Out of my deeper heart a bird rose and flew skywards.
Higher and higher did it rise, yet larger and larger did it grow.
At first it was but like a swallow, then a lark, then an eagle, then as vast as a spring cloud, and then it filled the starry heavens. Out of my heart a bird flew skywards. And it waxed larger as it flew. Yet it left not my heart." -Kahlil Gibran

Orchids, Birds & Winter

Because you have a sunlit mind/you are destined/
to become a moonlit heart. - Sri Chinmoy (excerpt from: Ten Thousand Flower-Flames)

Lone Tree

In the New Mexico desert, a lone tree stands; solitary under high blue sky of winter days, of silent silver moons hanging in black veils...weeks pass, then years. The tree stays, a fortress in the unrelenting wind, a sentinel of the dawn: scattering clouds paint dreams at its feet.

"And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair..." — Kahlil Gibran

Relections

The holiday season for me tends to bring reflection and pensiveness...gray days move slow: winter is a time to be in rest phase, as is nature. Bare branches struggle for light. Somehow we are reminded that spring WILL come, renewal blooms eternal in the wheel of the sky, the turn of the earth, the softening of the ground. For now, I rest, and think, and wonder. How often I am reminded that life is short and fleeting; that we must live in the now, in the moment. One thing I also am reminded of are all the people out there who believe in me. Whether you've bought my art, or appreciated it...or given me a kind word of encouragement or a box of supplies: I thank you, and am grateful and humble. When you see beyond the surface of my paintings, you see into my soul and heart: I hope you are taken to a higher plane, a step up the ladder of this existence. Art lives on, the energy turns and whirls into the breeze, into the light. Thank you. I wish all of you a happy New Year ahead, and that there will be change, a renewal, and light among us all.

Tree Branches of Winter

There is a beauty
In stark tree branches--
Lace sculptures held in gray hands of winter sky.
Something there that was not seen yesterday
But spoke to me today,
As I stood at the old weathered apple tree: fallen to frozen ground.

I silently, reverently, gathered
An armful
Of dead branches, bereft of leaves and life,
Held them in my warm hands,
Brought them in to the house
Arranged them in vases
Where suddenly

Those stark tree branches
Spoke eloquently of green life to come.

--Bonnie Joy Bardos

Night & Moon, Rose & Thorn

...The way the night knows itself with the moon, be that with me. Be the rose nearest to the thorn that I am. --Rumi

In The Storm Of Roses

Wherever we turn in the storm of roses,
the night is lit up by thorns, and the thunder
of leaves, once so quiet within the bushes,
rumbling at our heels. --Ingeborg Bachmann

Painting & Thought

"...and I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind." --Pablo Neruda

Landscape

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." Anais Nin

Blue Sky

Fall is upon us here in the mountains of N.C., and this landscape with brilliant blue sky captures the moment. I've just returned home from Arrowmont School of Arts & Craft in Gatlinburg, TN, after an oil painting workshop with Baton Rouge artist Libby Johnson. Many ideas are percolating!

Of The Soul & Joy

...Seat yourself next to your joy and have your awakened soul pour wine. ~ Rumi

Art Show

My paintings on display at Salon Blue Ridge in Flat Rock, NC.

The Journey Home: Rising Dreams

The Journey Home series evolved from one initial painting depicting land, the tip of a canoe, and water...it evokes ancient Japanese and Chinese poetry: the poet and his lone boat on the sea under a moonlit sky. As a poet and a thinking artist, I'm reminded that we are on a journey...and to grow and find our way, turn from all we know, have known, being fearless...to a unknown sea in our metaphoric lone boat. Over the years, in my personal life, I've done that very thing. Lessons in all experiences! I've since done more of these paintings, and think they will continue to appear on my easel by magic. For me, the small boat symbolizes the soul traveling home. For you, the viewer, let it symbolize whatever you may find within.

New Work: Esto Perpetua

Art & Life

Moving Water

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river
moving in you, a joy. --Rumi

Painting & Thought

Excerpt from "Summer" by Bonnie Joy Bardos

Summer twilight dreams waft into night
onto a dreaming summer moon
kissed by lightning bug wings;
Summer comes on night dew,
bull frog drums,
and untold things.

Esto Perpetua: Blue Field

About my ongoing Esto Perpetua series: I began this series several years ago, based around the Latin phrase of 'esto perpetua' (it is forever) which is written within the painting, worked into many transparent layers for the viewer to find and ponder.These canvases, both large and small, are always one of a kind, and depict nature and the sacredness of our earth. No trace of mankind is ever found in these landscapes, only mystery and peacefulness, quiet beauty, a sense of timelessness and spirituality. My belief is that nature is omnipresent, precious, powerful, and sacred. This series has become my language, my message to a world that needs to hear it. While a quiet, contemplative message, I hope it comes across loud and clear.


Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about. -Rumi

Art Trek Show

One of my paintings at the Upstairs Artspace...shown with Jim Cornell pottery.

A successful and busy "Art Trek Tryon: Foothills Open Studios Tour"! Thanks to all for making it a great event. More information can be found at the link to the right for the Upstairs. Art is work! And...life.

The Landscape

"The true artist is not concerned with the likeness of form, but aims at bringing forth the rhythm that pulsates within it, and then is carried to the beholder.” -- Su Tung-p’o, 10th Century Chinese poet

Sunset: Remembering

You are cloud, sea, forgetting;
you are also what you lost in a moment--
we are all those who have left.
The reflection of our face in the mirror
changes each instant
and every day has its own labyrinth.
The cloud vanishing in the sunset is our image;
endlessly, a rose becomes another rose.
--Jorge Luis Borges

Remembering Sunset

The Art Studio

I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints... -Joni Mitchell

New Work

This delicious Derek Walcott poem appears this month in the Purple Onion's newsletter compiled by Robert Seiler...and I love it. Poetry, good food, art, music all make this world go round. Despite the upheaval in the world, we must ground ourselves, and pay attention to the soul, to the spirit. I'm sharing this poem and others, including some of my own in this blog....please enjoy and find good energy!

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give Bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

--Derek Walcott

New Work: In Progress

This painting is in progress, 30" x 30" on linen...what started out as peaches transcended into apples...who knows where the road ahead will lead! I'm loving the rich, sensual colors. The three golden bars are part of an on-going series that are Jungian symbols for door hinges, a book opening to the metaphysical and more.

Update: August 2010 Well, this piece languished a while after I started it! It sat, and waited patiently...although I often have walked by it and loved the colors--so saturated and rich I could roll in them with abandon. The apple is GONE. I have painted over what was precious! Oh my! My intuition kept poking me about this...so I finally did it. What will come next? Hmmmm...how do you like those apples?

Joni Mitchell, from Clouds

"...Something's lost
but something's gained in living every day."

New Work: Esto Perpetua

Esto Perpetua: The landscape of the soul...

Artist Statement

Art, like writing and poetry, for me is an expression of the soul…the deepest self, where time and place do not matter…I am on a higher plane when creating. There is intense spirit and energy in my hands—often I do not know where I will take my painting—I am influenced by color, by thought, and by the natural world around us. I see nature as spiritual and symbolic—and seek to speak the unknown, to convey the unseen. My work is based on intuition, and what feeling I am attuned to at the moment. I feel the world intensely, both the ‘outer’ world, and most of all, the natural world: which is deeply connected to my inner world. The natural and inner world are more important to me.

New Work: Oranges & Thought

The Mythology of Birds Amid Dreams

"Art Is What You Can Get Away With." -Andy Warhol

Mary Oliver (one of my favorite American contemporary poets) excerpt from The Summer Day

"Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

Thoughts: the harder times become, the more determined I feel to create something that transcends to another place, to create good energy and beauty in a world that desperately needs it. Art is life....life is art...have you heard that before? This is the first piece I've put cherries into, but all the symbols I use are intuitive.

The Landscape

Commissioned Work (sold)

She Flew Away....And That Is So....

Open Studio: Starting In January 2009!

Open Studio/Art House: Scheduled to begin at my house on Greenville Street, Saluda, in mid-January 2009 on Saturdays from 11-3. By appointment or chance! Drop by and see new works in progress and more, and have lunch downtown at one of our fine restaurants. You can see my work in several of them: Purple Onion, Saluda Grade, and Tosh's Whistlestop cafe. I LOVE Saluda! In Tryon, you can often see my work at Upstairs Artspace, Bravo Design and Interiors, and at Trinity Street Gallery in Abbeville, SC...and so forth.