A Painter’s Mixed Result

This is the poem Harold Joiner read at the opening of Colors of a Place, because it beautifully expresses his experience in developing the paintings for the exhibition.

A Painter’s Mixed Result
by Audell Shelburne

I blend ocher and burnt umber,
search for shades of brown
to paint this desert scape,
scrape the makeshift palette
and hear the styrofoam sing
lush tones as pale streaks
take on deeper hues.
I study bursts of light and shade,
gaze into shimmers of heat
as an aging sun blisters the sky
and prepares to flood the desert
in baths of blood
before the darkness descends.
I mix sienna and sand,
wonder how to fix this image,
how to show what I see
blooming in brown.
I dabble in drab,
stipple dunes with shadows,
settle for the abstract memory.