Month: April 2018

Divinity with Talons

eagle

Divinity With Talons, Ronald Kok, pen and pencil crayons, 2018

The Eagle: Symbol of courage, strength, and immortality; “the kind of the skies”; symbol of Rome; connected with Zeus, Odin and the God of the Jewish-Christian scriptures; in Gospel symbolism, the image of Jesus as God from the gospel written by John the Revelator.

A few months ago I did a commissioned work of art for someone in which an eagle-like bird was descending on a female figure drowning in abstract waters, reaching out its talons to grab her hand pushed just above the waves. At the time, I was using the eagle as a symbol of God. The image I drew from for the eagle was fascinating and I wanted to explore it further. Recently I finished the above sketch as a study for a potential mosaic I have in mind. It got me thinking of the eagle again, and the many and varied ways it could be connected with the divine. So, between sitting on a city bus for my commute and hanging out at a coffee shop soaking up some sun, I composed the following poem:

Divinity with Talons

Divinity with talons
Grace with bite
Soaring
Hunting
Among the clouds angelic
You bring pain to earth

Wings spread wide
Awe follows your flight
Swooping
Gazing
Vision piercing disguise
None can hide from you

Fierce and beautiful in One
You fly above all of us
Waiting
Enduring
Wild King of the Wild Blue
Dive into our flesh

From soil to stratified air
You lift up, up and away
Striving
Rising
Rending blood, skin and bone
Piercing hearts, minds, eyes

Your wings uphold all things
All love, all death, all life, all
Gripping
Carrying
Your aerie fouled with our mess
Earth taints Heaven, your home

Powerful, fast, truly free
Peerless majesty on the wing
Stooping
Bending
Choosing the worst on purpose
Everything becoming nothing

Divinity with talons
Grace with bite
Rising
Rising
You take us along in flight
And take our breath away

 

Ronald Kok, April 27-28, 2018

 

Silvia’s Sunflowers

14

Ronald Kok, “Silvia’s Sunflowers”, mixed media mosaic on board, 2018

It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. However, my latest artwork isn’t so much imitation as it is edification in the purest sense of the word. I took another artist’s work and built my own work on top of it, quite literally.

Over the last year I’ve stumbled upon a mosaic style that has resonated with me. Most of my mosaic creations have been done on what I call “Wal-Mart art” canvases; that is, I purchase an art print that I find at a second-hand store, something originally sold via a store like Wal-Mart or Ikea or Homesense, gesso over it and resuse it as the base for a new mosaic. The “original” print disappears and my new creation appears.

I had purchased an art print on a board at my local Value Village a few months ago. It was an interesting work of sunflowers in a vase:

sunflowers-in-bronze-vase

I really liked the image on this print and had intended to somehow incorporate another artwork into it. However, it ended up setting around in my basement until some inspiration struck: Why not use the image as a template and build a mosaic over top? So that’s what I did.

In the process, I discovered that the artist of the original is Silvia Vassileva, a Bulgarian-born painter who has been incredibly prolific in her lifetime. I scrolled through literally thousands of art prints of hers on sale online, searching for these sunflowers. Finally, I just searched “Vassileva sunflowers” and got the image immediately. It is titled “Sunflowers in a Bronze Vase”. My title? I thought “Silvia’s Sunflowers” was appropriate, considering what I owe her in my edification of her work.  If you want to see more of what Silvia Vassileva has done, check out her work on Art.com.

Below are images of the process the artwork went through to go from Siliva’s print to my mosaic: