New Works, Summer Anticipation

Painting Portfolio/ECU

Oh yeah

furthermore

freshies

?

Some real school work

Dylan Plishka-Humphreys #0048724
For Jane Slemon, English 101, Sec 3.
Critical Review, “Red”.

Dylan Plishka-Humphreys #0048724
For Jane Slemon, English 101, Sec 3.
Critical Review, “Red”.

I Want To Stop Your Heart
Rothko’s Martyrdom Exposed for Theatrical Pleasure

I have seen respectable
death
served up like bread and wine
in stores and offices,
in club and hostel,
and from the streetcorner
church
that faces
two-ways;
I have seen death
served up
like ice.

Against this death, slow, certain:
the body,
this burly sun,
the exhalations
of your breath,
your cheeks
rose and lovely,
and the secret
life
of the imagination
scheming freedom
from labour
and stone.

Against This Death, Irving Layton

 (Geddes, 268)

        It is at this moment upon reflection that yours truly, a rain soaked and down trodden reviewer, flicks his fingers inside a chrome cigarette case to retrieve a crisp tailor-made Belmont, which is washed down ceremoniously with a short glass of Wild Turkey Kentucky Bourbon (no ice). Just as in John Logan’s play, there is a communion-taking place not only between the self and the memory of Mark Rothko, but also between the self and the pantheon of history’s embittered pariahs. Being a painter myself, not to mention a self-effacing one, I eagerly left the studio last week to catch the Vancouver Playhouse’s last performance of a Dante-esque painter’s mortal battle with ethos, mythos and oil. I was immediately tantalized by the rich pastiche presented; the cluttered studio tainted with red pigment, the classical music echoing in the space, and the exquisitely animated sequences of paint layers projected sliding across the stage’s mechanical curtains.  The first sight of our stoic hero fixating at his audience as though his own easel stimulates a romantic artistic sentiment that is today common stereotype fodder.  Machismo elements may be found bothersome to the equity of the production but due to real-life Rothko’s staunch business oriented work discipline and vigorous spirit, this interpretation is perhaps inextricable from the content’s core values.