now empty, seeing darkly
rickety ruin, reckoning time
slow decay, wood and iron
paint peels, elders age and pass
memory fades, children grow and move,
love, life and leaving,
ages decade, the house looks,
wood watches, iron remembers,
and wire weaves a tapestry of
threading trials, pedestrian patter
conversations, convulsions and change
happiness, harmony, and heights
sunlight dapples leaves
and through the crumbling curtain,
the gate to memory beckons.
My grandparent’s house old high set Queenslander in the small town of Jericho in western Queensland. Composition based on golden ratio. Technique influenced by Degas - painted in layers of pastel which are fixed using sprayed fixative after each layer is applied so that the layers show through each other. There is no mixing colours or smudging on the surface – only optical mixing of each colour layer.