THE ORANGE TREE
by John Nelson Shaw
“The young girl stood beside me. I saw not what her young eyes could see:
A light, she said, not of the sky lives somewhere in the orange tree.”
My work is a seemingly monochromatic patchwork of layered textures, creating an Aussie orange tree at sunset.
My work is holistic and environmental: I distill my own inks from The Mallee: black from flower petal ash, brown washes of eucalyptus bark, crayon skies created from natural beeswax, sienna sunset from collected riverbank stones. A glimmer of gold leaf shines.
The process of manually creating my palette are produced with love and gratitude, using classic timeworn techniques learned through my life travels.
In today’s troubled times. art is my journey to a sustainably different path. I see a new world arising, and that is magical.
The Orange Tree
The young girl stood beside me. I
Saw not what her young eyes could see:
A light, she said, not of the sky
Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree.
Is it, I said, of east or west?
The heartbeat of a luminous boy
Who with his faltering flute confessed
Only the edges of his joy?
Was he, I said, born to the blue
In a mad escapade of Spring
Ere he could make a fond adieu
To his love in the blossoming?
Listen! the young girl said. There calls
No voice, no music beats on me;
But it is almost sound: it falls
This evening on the Orange Tree.
Does he, I said, so fear the Spring
Ere the white sap too far can climb?
See in the full gold evening
All happenings of the olden time?
Is he so goaded by the green?
Does the compulsion of the dew
Make him unknowable but keen
Asking with beauty of the blue?
Listen! the young girl said. For all
Your hapless talk you fail to see
There is a light, a step, a call,
This evening on the Orange Tree.
Is it, I said, a waste of love
Imperishably old in pain,
Moving as an affrighted dove
Under the sunlight or the rain?
Is it a fluttering heart that gave
Too willingly and was reviled?
Is it the stammering at a grave,
The last word of a little child?
Silence! the young girl said. Oh why,
Why will you talk to weary me?
Plague me no longer now, for I
Am listening like the Orange Tree.
l o t u s - c o u n t s
as of 15 July, 2024 I've created a total off 686,544 lotus marksn e w s
WINNER
DIFFA CHICAGO
International Artist Award
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This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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