Each painting in this series is acrylic paint on 3/4" mahogany wood panel 30/36 inches. Multiple layers of ripped and tattered pages from my old books are glued down onto the panel. Each dried layer of paper of the author's actual work builds up making a textured surface which creates a subtle tension with the staccato-like brushwork and the posed calm photographs of the 1800's used as reference for each painting. Below is a detail of the Emily Dickinson painting. It shows in certain areas Emily's poetry peeking through the portrait.

My choice of writers comes from discovering Ralph Waldo Emerson at a young age. He opened my eyes to reading and especially to the writers and artists of the 1800's. His enigmatic truths unlocked the secrets to the poetry and philosophies that helped shape the New England landscapes and culture that I love. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature

'To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has it's beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture that was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.'

Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass     

'Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the Earth'

Henry David Thoreau - Walden

'Be resolutely and faithfully what you are,  be humbly what you aspire to be.....Man's noblest gift to man is his sincerity,  For it embraces his integrity also.'

Emily Dickinson - Complete Poems  

This World is not Conclusion. 
A Species stands beyond - 
Invisible, as Music -
But positive, as Sound -
It beckons, and it baffles - 
Philosophy, dont know - 
And through a Riddle, at the last - 
Sagacity, must go -
To guess it, puzzles scholars -
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown -
Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies - 
Blushes, if any see - 
Plucks at a twig of Evidence - 
And asks a Vane, the way - 
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit -
Strong Hallelujahs roll - 
Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul -    

   # 373  R.W.Franklin -  Readin Edition

Edgar Allan Poe - Complete Poetry and Tales

His gray hairs are records of the past, and his grayer eyes sybils of the future.         from  Ms. Found In A Bottle

More Authors to Come