Autumn Years Spring 2024

THE ARTIST By Louis C. Baptiste

I’ve seen now the artist’s vantage point It dwells in an imaginary position Quite some distance above the earth Only in this way could they see it all together Those visions as smoke through the air Their drawings are a pulling forth of ideas Not just an immediate replication of images Then the feelings transfer with the brush strokes And everything about their paintings Suggest that it is more poetry than reality And so it is with me now as I hover over them alone Yet exulting in my distance above these images They are inhabited in a garden, surrounded by doves And patches of deep blue iris, as big as ponds Where I can submerge myself again and again

Tournesol I, alcohol ink.

There are night falls, and heavens, of that same blue My life is beautiful and fulfilled because artists exist They, to me, shape the meaning of life; a glance, a touch One’s image accentuated by nature’s lights and shadows How the artist’s mind and soul can display life’s beauty Our surroundings have changed, the landscape is blighted By fast food joints and big box retail stores and malls Filling us with false nourishment and fleeting possessions Instead, my sustenance is nurtured by realistic renditions From radiance of the world through an artist’s eyes

SPRING 2024 I AUTUMN YEARS 51