Sandy Conlon – Return of Spring, Ken Backhaus

Inspired by Return of Spring by Ken Backhaus

Sandy Conlon

Art Song

From this solitary labor springs forth abundant perspectives, myriad ways of seeing patterns of color embodied in the odd and beautiful things of this world. American poet Wallace Stevens saw at least 13 ways of looking at a black bird.

Now here we are in the museum with maybe 113 ways of looking –aspen trimmed in saffron, sea-green and sky-blue oceans, picturesque lakes, horses whinnying in the morning mist, seascapes, fruits and flowers, and just five small black birds sweet trilling in the willows, sure harbingers of spring.

Hillsides of terra cotta, amber, and burnt sienna, human faces and faraway places, 113 perspectives – fields in winter white, silver-streaked rocks and rills like tungsten steel in the afternoon light reflected in the eye of a blackbird.

Blackbirds I have known lurk in timber breaks and moss-green meadows by riverbanks, fluttering about searching for crumbs and seed. There’s no mistaking them for shades from the underworld or shadow partners in some mystic union.

In the museum once more and 113 ways of seeing –wooden fences, scrub oak, mountain ash chili-pepper red, and the blackbird’s iridescent hues piercing the clouds, a sunset glowing vermillion, opalescent rose, and shadows shading dense undergrowth in deep viridian, indigo, and cobalt blue.

Perspective and variety created by the painter’s palette –a blackbird perched on a tall reed, not stirring from a bird’s eye view while the hawk hungrily circles a ferret in hiding –the lucid and ineluctable rhythms of necessity and desire. u