The Peony Theater
I got angry at the Peonies the other day.
For flopping their heavy
heads around, drooping
this way and that.
Too many blossoms all at once,
I thought.
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It’s true. The other day I got angry at the Peonies… It was peak blossom time and that meant days in front of them looking, drawing, smelling, watching and ultimately synthesizing them for the 4th panel in the 5-panel painting of my backyard. It was their time. It was the Opening of The Peony Theater.
But the composition of the blooms just wasn’t quite right.
I got angry at the Peonies and quickly found a bit of poetic humor in it.
I immediately thought of Louis Glück’s poem after Pushkin:
OMENS
I rode to meet you: dreams
like living beings swarmed around me
and the moon on my right side
followed me, burning.
I rode back: everything changed.
My soul in love was sad
and the moon on my left side
trailed me without hope.
To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely,
making, in silence, omen of mere event,
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.
(after Alexander Pushkin)
I was stuck and frustrated with how things were unfolding in the studio. So, I was seeing the Peonies through that lens. I ended up hammering some stakes into the ground and creating a kind of puppet theater, raising the bobbing Peony heads with twine. Arranging them in such a way they each had their own space.
It was a calm, overcast, late-morning.
The sun came out later that afternoon and the Peonies embraced their new positions with great vibrancy and fragrance. I could see them opening minute by minute, warmed and blossoming. How silly I am, I thought! How care and attention is all that life needs. All that I need. How the Peonies, in all their glory, bobbing in the gentle breeze, have everything to teach me, to show me. The constellation of their grouping a perfect composition.
I look forward to the Opening of the Peony Theater each year. Last year was my first year to paint the wondrous event. I made a series of paintings within a span of several days. Those moments of witnessing were filled with great urgency. I was literally watching them opening. It felt to me like there was no greater event on earth than this extraordinary theater before me. I still feel that way.
To have a garden is to witness life. Each day of each year a gift unfolding.
Here is that series of paintings from that first year:
You can hear more about my Peony Theater in my podcast episode entitled “Opening” HERE.