Colors of an artist

The Colors of an Artist By Peter Giles

Inside the studio kept canvas plates

Turned muck and oil idleness

To pleading and methodical scrapes

That wait for love and tenderness

My colored dusted palette, as a plan

To make such art of skill and beauty

Then freely use the brush in hand

A group of squawking pigments merry

From the tubes the paint will lie

Dripping to give their honest valor

The grandeur of a well-placed sky

or dream perhaps of swirling shores.

Naively trust the color black

and as a fool, try each with speck and spot

but further your stance and then pull back

Fool Remember. Your grey, in a mixing pot.

French Ultra marine, Burnt Umber turning

Fighting so they live renewed

and Cad’ red helps their dream eternal

spinning wheel to white, that law is certain

Painting the worthy flowers speckled

Delivering dances on light blown hills

Long they grow and balanced jostled

On that day they gave love that filled

Poor living yes, but richness in the gift of trees

Unsaid trials, enormous feats to learn

The Time it takes before color sees

Can I mix and paint a feathered fern?

Blues and Yellows brilliants sights

Screamed to me their needy right

They opened wide to gain the sun

Hoping I could paint each one

Colors bare and secret shades

of magic stippled across the way

Each poppy, rose and flower spoke

All the vistas laying I had to paint.

Life judged by others made by the artist

But nature knows it’s only space

To the flower, it is smartest

holding to its’ rightly place.

Using stealth and gentle to evoke

The secret of the colored strokes

Now know I, the strength of all

stands treasured forever on my wall.