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Sunrise over Smith Point
By Robert Lewis
Oil on canvas, 11" x 14"
(Permanent collection of the Academy Art Museum, Easton,
Maryland) |
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Tenebrae
By Elizabeth Hurst Downs
Through the narrow opening
between the house across the street
and its great evergreen,
the orange ball of sun is cast to me.
I pause to catch it, awed
at my chance presence
to this perfect birthing
of another day.
This is Holy Week
and I am called at evening
to a service of descending light
and shadows at the church. There
–
exactly at another edge of earth
–
the orange orb appears again,
now slipping slowly
out of sight.
Inside the church we pray the psalm,
From the rising of the sun
until its going down,
let God's name be praised.
Tonight the candles are put out,
one by one, until the last flame,
lowered to the floor behind the altar,
waits a shattering sound
before it may be lifted up
illuminating a priestly face.
I have been shown the miracle of the day,
its vermillion-pointed origin and end;
I fell the quaking earth,
love all but snuffed in righteousness
turned violent in greed and war.
Light of the world, blaze up
in me, in us, and spread
like wildfire leaping
heart to heart
before it is
too late. |
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Elizabeth Hurst Downs
is a wife, mother, grandmother, singer, painter, and
poet. She is a graduate of Duke University with
additional work at The Juilliard School of Music.
Email:
wsehdowns@adelphia.net
Parish: The
Episcopal Church of the Ascension - Gaithersburg,
Maryland
Robert Lewis is a native Californian but has lived
in many parts of the country including Alaska, the
Northwest, the South, and the East Coast. Perhaps this
has contributed to his long fascination with the
stunning beauty of the landscape. Philosophically, he
starts from a direct point of view that practices
dislodging the usual filters we place between ourselves
and the world in which we live.
The combination of these two enduring themes of his
life, love of landscape and the practice of seeing
directly, has led naturally to plein air painting. Plein
air painting is the perfect expression of love of
landscape and the desire to show it as it is, without
comment. Lewis tries to eliminate himself from the
painting as best he can so that, in the end, he can only
be found in the choice of subject and in the execution
of painting. Lewis paints in oil on canvas on location,
finishing his paintings on site usually in a single
sitting.
Email:
robert@robertlewisgallery.com
Web site:
www.robertlewisgallery.com
Parish: St. Mary's-by-the-Sea, Pacific Grove, California |
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