The Stone Fence

 Andrew WYETH 🇺🇸

The Stone Fence

1946 

"Painted in 1946, The Stone Fence exemplifies Andrew Wyeth's mastery of tempera. On this media Wyeth has said: "It's a dry pigment mixed with distilled water and yoke of egg. I love the quality of the colors: the earths, the terra verde, the ochers, the Indian reds, and the blue-reds. They aren't artificial. I like to pick the colors up and hold them in my fingers. Tempera is something with which I build--like building in great layers the way the earth was itself built. Tempera is not the medium for swiftness." (as quoted in T. Hoving, Andrew Wyeth, New York, 1995, p. 11) At this time in his career Wyeth employed materials and techniques to minimize the trace of the artist's hand. "My aim is to escape from the medium with which I work. To leave no residue of technical mannerisms to stand between my expression and the observer. To seek freedom through significant form and design rather than through the diversions of so-called free and accidental brush handling." (A. Weinberg, Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth, New York, 1998, p. 30)

Whether seen in a weather-beaten fence post, in an empty cornfield after harvest or in the wrinkled face of an old man, Andrew Wyeth's paintings bear witness to the passage of time. The Stone Fence is among the artist's most profound representations of this theme, as the painting reveals the artist's great sense of the past and the present as expressed in the vernacular architecture and ancient farm implements of rural Pennsylvania. Wanda Corn has noted the importance of temporal qualities in Wyeth's work, writing, "Time stops as his paintings make permanent what we know to be transitory. Paths and tracks in the snow or sand, or birds in flight become as fixed and static as ancient hieroglyphs; a sunbeam's playfulness on a wall, a patch of snow in the sun, or a fleeting flush of anger on his wife's cheek are made timeless and unchanging." (The Art of Andrew Wyeth, San Francisco, California, 1973, p. 155) The present work was completed in the artist's studio of the Hoffses' house, East Waldoboro, Maine."

There are artists who inspire and i try to incorporate their style of composition and subject matter in my photographs. Wyeth is one. 

The circling broken

 The circling broken

John Clare Stokes

I can hear the old tractor coming

Making another circling around

The home place

Past the syrup shed

Down the grape arbor

Over to the blueberries

Into the pines and sparkle berries

Echoing off the low pond

To the eastward persimmon

Coming again to the fine sand

To pause by the two Camellia  

Again! Again! The boy cried

And off they went

As I stood watching

And so I daily stand by the 

well rutted trail

And I listen for the sound

Of their returning.

To the memory of Rev Luther Ray Stokes

Oct 16, 1924

March 12, 2011

Landon Stokes

August 25, 1988

Present SC

Father felco

 Felco daddy

Johnclarestokes 

Some tools just fit

just right in the hand

Not always at first

But after years of breaking in

Today I trained the muscadines 

on the nine gauge wire

Not sure where to cut them

Needing him who knew exactly

He knew just how and when

To prune with the Felco

It was the essential part

Of the latter growth

Assuring the vine

would thrive in time 

In these hands

It’s more the butcher

Cutting with a prayer

Jeopardizing future fruit

But in his hands

Every cut as from above.

Deep dark

 Into the deep dark

John Clare Stokes 

Into the deep dark wood

we often must go

far from the sound of

joy, the familiar ones

a deep dark wood where

the light is dim around

but even there in the

dark surround

the sound of one above

a familiar song

Not quite so strong as

when in the brightest light

Nevertheless 

a sweet song in the night.

Cardinal comfort 

Front yard

Monday in March

 Days like this when we’ve gotten seven inches of rain

When the legs don’t won’t to walk but sit with the butt

When I go through old memory posts and find the ones I like most

Then think, it’s all for Melissa for she is about the only one who will like it

I say, what’s the use, why the bother, and I don’t

If it wasn’t a Monday in March and it was sunny

Maybe I would be out with the soaked chickens emptying the rain gauge given me

And not worrying about Melissa being the only friend.

The March winds of 2020

 The March winds 

Johnclarestokes 

And this is life on this tenth of March

Watching as Swallowtails overshoot the yard

Like the River runners so missed ascending the Hart

The brisk, cool winds driving them all so hard.

My little helper is off with his mom in Guam

His daddy out fishing on the Cocos

Mel down in Williston with her ailing mom

Jordon with the Army in Korea as we speak

And has it been eleven years since daddy died?

Mamma sitting on the couch writing in her dairy

I’ll soon be with best friend Rick bike riding

The Swallowtails I am sure will land safely.

Grok on John Clare Stokes

https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_7d45ff99-81c1-4deb-a68c-9d258f735cad

John Clare I know but who is this John Stokes?

Cost me my job

 Today in Columbia past a photo came up. This person cost me my job as a photograher for the Reporter indirectly. It was July 1984 and the Lovely Shop downtown caught fire. Harvey Campbell, the sports editor and i arrived soon after and covered it into the evening. Gustafson was a Reporter who showed up late and snapped a few shots. Later that evening in an editorial meeting Don Caldwell, the Publisher and Kathy Fichera Editor voted to say photos by staff instead of naming each photo taker under the photo. Harvey and i dissented since we had done all the work. Later that night when all had left and the paper was about to be printed, Harvey went into the composing room and added photo by… under each photo. It was thus printed. The next morning Fichera called me in her office and i was let go. I dont think anything was done to Harvey. Who knows, maybe he threw me under the bus.

Pine Sunday

Pine Sunday

john clare stokes

Word got out

The man upon 

The donkey would

Be passing through 

We took the pines

And strawed the way

We thought he'd take

But LO he never came

We later learned 

It was further south

Down by the palms. 

The pull

 The inexplicable pull

The day was growing long, the destination far, there really was little time for lingering, yet there in park I was,  gazing long into the old place. The wisteria seemed in the same state I was, searching for signs of a way of life gone, moved on. A desperate sort of search, before his own kind totally consumed.

Trinity at cemetery

 Eleven 

John Clare Stokes

Seems if you survived beyond eleven 

Ole death and his two helpers wouldn’t

come around again til around the fourth

score and one 

that is until a few years after sixty two

when ole death recruited an army of helpers.

The trinity in the cemetery 

Price Creek Cemetery

Some folks

 Stokes 

Why some folks

they smoke 

Some they brush

On the 

Down stroke 

Some they just

Sit there like a

Pig in a poke

No joke

Watch that box

All day 

Who you say?

Why some’s my

own kinfolk