After years of mastering his craft of oil painting, Bruce began to embrace mixed media. His new technique ranged from using various wet and dry art media (like oil and acrylic paint, pastel, and pencil) on the same canvas, to creating paper collage and assemblage incorporating everything from magazine ads to actual metal paint tubes to strings of Christmas tree lights.
Those three bright spots above the bottle in the still life painting below? Clear glass marbles. It is easy to see why they appeal to him; they are shiny, reflective, smooth, yet just disruptive enough to the picture plane to excite the eye. Their shape is echoed in the grapes on the table and their light is mirrored by the dollops of gold paint on the lower right edge. He may be depicting a still life, among the most traditional and popular subjects in painting for centuries, but the marbles are part of what makes this his still life. Bruce’s delight in his materials is evident in both the poem and the painting that follow.
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Marbles
Crystal
…..Marbles . . .
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On . . . .
…..The.
……….Table
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Playing . . . . .
…..With the light
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AS
…..If
……….It
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.. . . were a marble!
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The whole . . thing
—
Round
Various
Pointillist
Pontification
—
Seen
—
And
Seizing
—
The
Global Aspects
—
Come
Down
—
To this:
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Bliss on a table
—
In the middle
—
Of May!
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Still Life
Mixed media on canvas, 20″ x 14.5″
Artwork and poetry copyright 2009 Bruce MacGibeny. All rights reserved.
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