Let Our Hearts Fly
“Let Our Hearts Fly”, poem and image © B.E. Kazmarski
My heart is heavy with the news of the school shooting today. I’ve used my creative efforts in a poem and image. May we remember the innocent children, the adults who tried to protect them, and the families they leave behind.
Let Our Hearts Fly
A cardinal
flashing red in the bare winter landscape
innocent of my intent
I missed my shot, my camera open to receive too much light
yet it was then that I heard
of the shooting of other innocent birds
on this brilliant morning
colorful plumage
melodic chatter
gathered in a trusted place
a flash of red
too many left behind
others holding hands
closing eyes to run.
No.
Please let it not be so.
For those who can no longer fly
let our hearts fly to be with them
flashing red in the brilliant and bare winter morning.
Poem © B.E. Kazmarski
All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.
Sketches: The Living Room Concert
The Living Room Concert, 7″ x 10″, ink © B.E. Kazmarski
Live music is more special than can be described, no matter the genre. Like seeing an original painting, watching musicians perform a program of music can’t be equaled in any recording.
And hearing it in the comfort of someone’s living room makes it all the better, with no real distance between the performers and the listeners. It’s really the way music was meant to be appreciated.
This was another concert of the “Living Room Chamber Music Project” in Pittsburgh, this time at a friend’s house. Feeling more comfortable in this venue I carried my Big Bag of Art Materials intending to sketch if I could, if the muse was with me and I wouldn’t distract or interrupt the musicians or the audience. And so she was with me while I produced three sketches and lots of ideas for paintings and possibly collaboration. I love to sketch musicians while they play, letting their performance and the music itself carry me along.
The group has two pianists, Billie Jo Miller and Jack Kurutz, who play at alternate times and act as page turners for each other and sometimes play piano four hands, and a violinist, Ashley Buckley, an oboeist, Lenny Young, and a vocalist who did not perform here tonight because she is in another performance. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire concert, but hearing Spiegel im Spiegel live had me spellbound.
Schumann, pencil, 9″ x 7″ © B.E. Kazmarski
Pièce, pencil, 7″ x 8″ © B.E. Kazmarski
Read about another concert by these musicians, and more about chamber music.
Small Roses
Small roses, pastel, 8″ x 6″, 2001 © B.E. Kazmarski
Just one little sliver of sunlight crept through the blind and that was all it took to illuminate these old roses in a tiny glass vase. I stood in my kitchen and sketched this as quickly as possible before the light changed.
These are roses that I grow, am unbelievably bright pink pasture rose and an ancient deep red sweet-smelling climbing rose. Blooming plentifully in June, I placed them in an inexpensive glass bowl; they fall apart rather quickly but I still wanted to enjoy them indoors. I had prepared a number of drawing surfaces on old pieces of mat board, this being a combination of gesso and marble dust applied in a thick impasto, leaving deep brush marks for whatever I drew on it.
Here is a photo of the pink pasture rose.
I sell a print of this as a signed digital canvas print of an original pastel painting, gallery-wrapped on wooden canvas stretchers with black paint covering the sides, ready to hang or frame as you choose. The original was 8″ x 6″, but canvas stretchers are difficult to find smaller than 8″ so I just make a slightly larger print and gallery wrap it. I can also make an original size print and wrap it around a piece of 1/2″ gatorboard. I can also make other size prints as well, and I offer it as a greeting card in one of my collections. Find it in my Etsy shop.
Chive Talkin’
Chives
Good, now you can have that disco ditty by the BeeGees running through your head too.
I took this photo at just this angle. The chives lean in over my wooden steps, and at that time of the afternoon they cast these perfect shadows on the weathered, grained and scratched wood. It’s a simple repeating design with subtle colors I might use as a background somewhere, perhaps not the photo itself but a stylized version of it, as below, with a little more detail and finishing. Cool block print or screen print too.
Stylized Chives
Grand Entrance
Grand Entrance, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
The the shallow angles of the staircase to the second floor of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, colorful in the late afternoon sun streaming in the window wall out of view to the right. The geometry of the steps and color blocks appealed to me with the two non-geometric figures in the foreground, lots of symbolism about goals and climbing and achievement as we went to see the Impressionist exhibit. You’re not supposed to photograph in the museum, but how can I visit a place that awakens my creative self without taking it in and expressing it creatively? I caught a few photos, though not of the art, just of the space.
Today 