Sonnet 1: Thyself thy foeFrom fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding. Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.William Shakespeare |
January 2012 |
|
The overall motive of the painting is due to the momentarily invoked reference to the injunction to increase and multiply in Genesis, that is, to the Garden of Eden. Hence the painting represents, more or less, a garden. Yet this garden is not really the garden of Eden — it is subverted by the refusal to procreate, described in the sonnet in terms of two conflicting metaphors -- one to a flame/candle, and the other to a rose bud. So, the greens and blues of my landscape and the sky above it are subverted by reds and oranges. |
|