Untitled "D" 1997, original ink painting/drawing

Untitled "D" 1997-08-12 framed ink painting.

This elemental work looks like it happened, rather than was painted.

The action of the lines that connect the black drips of ink feel more practical than aesthetic. They float upward like buoyant air plants, or sea pods tethered to the ocean floor.

The dark spreading strokes join in a watery trench, and gesture gently upward. The whole piece defies gravity, it exudes a dreamy sensation of lift, that contradict a work so punctuated with austere shaped blots of pure inscrutable darkness, with palpable weightlessness.

As I give myself to this painting I can't help but float. My feet are lighter and my arms drift towards the ceiling.

This painting lifts me, rising from the depths of a sleep whose narratives have just slipped from comprehension, I gently move upward through a world of familiar strangeness, to the surface of a new day. Now out of bed, the last inky clouds of night are scattered by the muted light of morning. I feel lighter, somehow, in my sleep, I rose above, and now see a playful humor in the hapless sea monsters that chased me yesterday. 

Size: 14" x 11"

Frame Size: 23" x 18.5 "

Medium: Ink and dipping pen on paper

Untitled poem by Aja Tahari Marsh, written about this painting

Summer starts gently
then explodes 
all at once.
Thunderstorms and sunlight 
calling for more more more.
All the growing things
balance a wild grace
refusing
to go unnoticed
even as the sunsets creep
ever closer
saying "let's hold on
to the daylight."