Non Serviam, Shades of Gray

I return, now, to blurring and combining artistic mediums. Thus, as examples today I present two pieces of my own work that rely on one another for conceptual strength.

"Shades of Gray."

As I sit
Meticulously mixing my
Shades of gray
On the patio
Wishing that you
Were across from me,
Spewing beautifully your
Scholarship or
Philosophy that you
Called by another
Name, discussing our
Various shades of
Gray, angles of
So very not binary
Differences in perception,
Of the shades
Of the colors
Of our lives
And views and
Lifestyles, the
Difference in the
Shade of which
Did nothing but
Prove that our
Modes and our
Dispositions (the
Fundamentals of the
Blacks and whites that
Must most intrinsically
Originally make us up)
Most notably and
Startlingly were
(or were to become)
So strikingly similar.

Even the shades
That sometimes must
Strike each others’ eye
As vile or a bit
Jarring at least
Were shades that we
Mixed for ourselves,
Splashed across our
Own palettes, and later
Regretted of ourselves,
Or colored over with
A different shade…
I’m sure that you
Can see this, Darling,
The pigments in each of us
That bother each other
Tend to be the ones that
We suddenly start to
Regret using ourselves.
In short, the tones
That we each
Call the other out on
Makes each of ourselves,
In turn, by reflection,
Better.

Mars Black and
Titanium White sit
Drying on my palette
With very little wet
On the canvas,
As I’m having a hard
Time recovering the
Work that I dropped
To commence the painting
That I did for you.
I’m realizing that work required
A bit of a different style,
A bit of a different set of
Skills than my
Usual, much like
You yourself do, but I’m
Realizing that it
Very well may have
Made me a better
Artist. After
Certain techniques that
I developed to
Mix the greens to
Form the tree that
Includes us, includes the
Cycle of the things that
We arguably must serve,
The blacks and whites and
Shades of gray on
The work that I
Put away for a bit
Seem challengingly
Simplistic, although more
Definitively structured.
My brush keeps
Drifting to the tone of
Surreal that, through
Painting for you, I
Came to realize, more
Thoroughly captures
The gradients of the
Hue of who we are,
Who we are to be and
Paint ourselves as,
But obscures the precision
Of past architectural
Lines. Gobs of dried
Acrylic still sit in the
Divots of my palette
This morning, with very
Little used. I left it
To mix and mold
Our shades and shapes of
Black and white to
Compatible grays together,
The way, I feel,
That we are both best served.


"Non Serviam; The Things That We May and May Not Serve."
(A self-portrait(of sorts) in acrylic paint, oil pastels, and collage-elements that aso appears on my DeviantART profile, and was presented as a gift to Hysteric Noir, the other individual depicted in the work.)


I will analyze the connections between the two in my next entry.