1991 Singer of the Sun

There is a Stevens poem which talks of Walt Whitman.












In the far South the sun of autumn is passing
Like Walt Whitman walking along a ruddy shore.
He is singing and chanting the things that are part of him,
The worlds that were and will be, death and day.
Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end.
His beard is of fire and his staff is a leaping flame.

I was making paintings of sun flowers on the bay beach where Walt had written poems that influenced Van Gogh as he painted his own Sunflowers.



I made a kind of profane altar to art (?), of Sunflowers and Shells on a rope. I painted it on the beach many times and this had become what one could term as Sacred land.

I had always loved Italian Fresco and was always looking for a content to picture as a similar project.



As I worked I saw I had a kind of Giotto chapel, to Van Gogh and Whitman or more,to what, as Bloom infers, the American Religion, in which we all have our insights as artists and poets.

Blue Skies and Clouds hold the work together as a whole.