Saturday, May 31, 2008

père lachaise::les symboles





"old styles, old tempos, all the engagement of the day -
the sedate, the regulated fray - the antique light, the moral rose, old gusts, tight whistlings from the past, the mothballs in the love at last our man forswore."
[from 'medgar evers' by gwendolyn brooks, 1968]

Saturday, May 24, 2008

paris rouge::les milieux

moroccan rose petal tea in the lush sleekness of the ysl salon privé...


gliding along the seine with a red steel box of secrets...


ascending to a mysterious rendez-vous at chez julien...


red walls and freeflow wicker::an unlikely combo for modernist architects...

Thursday, May 22, 2008

paris rouge::les objets

redo-rhino demagog-demigod guarding the temple of modern mod-art...


the holy receptacle of sacred water for precious futuristic gardens...


randomly thought-out nest chair for the poetically agitated...

for slow-paced adventures in the land of remnant-romantics...

les objets rouges of paris firing up serendipitous passion in spades...

Friday, May 16, 2008

paris rouge::les portes






behind the red portal doors the insistent ghost tend to her garden of occidental conceit...layered greenness draped with white roses, heavily scented, lightly virtuous, easily bruised...
the ghost poet looks out his window at the darkening of this jade canopy, elusive words clinging to torn pages...
the ghost artist hoards the hours of light, shifting images in pale grey strokes on another fresh canvas...
the ghost pianist lingers on notes that cry out for a sultry voice, a faithful orchestra, the lover who turns his back when the music begins to fade...
the ghost of the muses visits upon them all, at the vanquished hour, when the snow roses float in the moonlight and the portal doors creak open slightly to let in the river breeze...
the poet is lying fitfully on his nest of tangled lines, the pianist trembles in a mild state of satie fever, the painter in fragile sleep still dreams in flashes of luminous hues...
the gardener ghost drifts through her vernal nightscape, fading in and out of the dawning mist, entangled in the reaching branches...

'behind the red portal doors' by g.verster, 2008

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

off gaya street

off gaya street [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 90 cm
something about hot pink walls against a bright blue sky...I find them in borneo, in mexico, even in paris [see below post]...but not much in rainy vancouver...
one of my father's shop buildings [from the 1960's] off the main street downtown and a couple of blocks from his office...walk behind these blocks and across the parking lots is the lush jungly hillside shimmering in the tropical heat and afternoon sea breezes...some days I would play marbles along the shaded sidewalk behind the coffeeshop with the kids from the record store...

Monday, May 12, 2008

paris tropicale



the palette for my paris paintings is usually moody greys and the muddier colours...but having tropical blood, I can still be drawn to the brights, be they in france or in borneo, which I am now exercising in the paintings of my father's buildings...

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

rue keller

rue keller [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; diptych 60 x 100 cm
a 1960's generic schoolhouse for the little ones in the bastille...across the street is a magic store, a tap-dancing studio, a one-stop gothshop, several emerging designers' boutiques, a gay and lesbian youth centre, a bicycle shop...in short, everything to encourage a well-rounded childhood on top of the standard education provided under the bleu-blanc-rouge...

Sunday, May 4, 2008

paris me manque...


paris me manque...
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

every spring I spread my wings for my french feeding ground...I flock to be with my caillebottes, my morisots, my rodins...I land in the shade of the branches above the place des vosges...I find again my nest on rue charles V...
and I will answer the call of the crazy bird across the street in the garden of the marquis de brinvilliers...

Thursday, May 1, 2008

baudelaire's muses

du temps que la nature en sa verve puissante concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux, j'eusse aimé vivre auprès d'une jeune géante, comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux...

baudelaire still musing away in the jardin du luxembourg...

j'eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux; deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme aux brouillards humides qui nagent dans ses yeux;
parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes; ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes, et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,
lasse, la font s'étendre à travers la campagne, dormir nonchalamment à l'ombre de ses seins, comme un hameau paisible au pied d'une montagne.


['la géante', charles baudelaire (1821-67)]