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 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
Paintings are not just for Reading.

You stare, asking why
What is going on here,
There are grapes and
Lilies,
With a skull
And two chairs.

True it can be read
We do all the time,
But stand and see
How the colours combine
Finding a harmony,
An untold rhyme.

The pink tip of that rose
Echoes in the sky,
Giving a painting
A sudden surprise
Which shimmers the greyness
In her shadowed brow.

If one moves ones eyes
Finds different ways
To enter this world
The artist has made,
You'll come to see
Paintings are not just for Reading.

Love Mary **
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
Marie Thérèse Walter, an imaginative tale.

Marie Thérèse lifted up her golden hair
And placed a clip on the left to hold back a fringe.
She came through the city of Paris, in the hot sunshine wearing simple sandals
And a Summer dress.
           --------------------------
At the door of her lover's house she paused,
Wondering wistfully how he would greet her.
Would she find him laden with canvas
Impatient for her love or her pose.
He was an artist, fabulously famous,
Married, with son, to a noble woman.
She was his mistress at seventeen.
The thing from which he drew inspiration.
That moved her to tears.
                ------------------------
On a street in Paris whilst shopping,
Browsing the Galleries Lafayette,
They had met by chance in an instance,
Her face attacking his skin.
Tall, athletic and graceful,
A beauty with Grecian profile,
Fascinated, he was, by her movement,
The space between her eyes.

Unhindered by his pronouncement,
She offered to model there in;
And so began the beginning,
Of changes,
That altered art from within.
             ----------------------------
The price of art is expensive,
Its development claims many lives,
For Marie Therese it was lonely,
After Picasso said goodbye.
She lived with their daughter,
Maya, born out of love,
But ten years of giving,
Only made her sad.
After he died,
She knew, her time had come.
Knowing the world was empty
With his power gone.

Love Mary xxxx
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
When I draw you I create both of us anew,
Your form fills my eyes and I am moved,
I take from you myself, and all my idiosyncrasies.
You are my voice calling its name,
I try to find what is beauty,
Through line and mark and scale,
I give this back to you as Love,
A drawing on a page.

Love Mary
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
Van Gogh's models were the poor,
The peasants, hungry with grief,
Girls lost and lonely in misery,
The sewer for whom time was a thief.

Manet came from the classes,
His models passionately posed,
One controversial painting,
Naked and eyes not closed.

Delacroix had them writhing,
Like snakes in an arabesque,
Or standing there half- naked,
A banner wrapping their head.

Then we come to Picasso,
The woman and girls that he loved,
Painted with ultimate tenderness,
A child holding a dove.

Go back in time to the medieval,
Where models turned into saints,
And angels surrounding madonnas
Quietly came and went.

Today the life class is different,
Feminism has made it unclean,
And Art Schools practice the video,
Naked bodies now rarely seen.

But drawing from observation,
Is a skill perfected by work,
Letting  the imagination,
Creating a beauty that lasts.

Love Mary **
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
They all spoke at once,
Claiming their first choice of pose:
Reclining sublimely on mattress,
Or balancing slightly on toe,
Some wanted seated sedately,
Others curled up into a ball.
Whatever it was it was difficult,
I did get paid after all.

So after position was chosen,
Took quietly to my place,
Hoping that comfort found me,
I did not get a pain or an ache.
Found a patch of grey on the window,
To focus my gaze for the day.
Then drifted off into dreamland,
Until my head fell away.

Love Mary **
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
PAINTING PICTURES.

I spent my last day
Looking at pictures
Paintings of a friend
We tried to decide
What was finished
And found it hard in the end.

How long does one continue
When a subjects found
Does one plod on regardless
Or learn to live underground.

Love to Ian for his friendship from Mary ***
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
I like paintings with passageways
They point you in two directions
Multispectival,
Metaphysical all the way.
In my hall is "The Courtyard",
A print by Pieter de *****,
It shows two Dutch ladies
Contemplating their chosen routes
One looks outward to the world
A solitary life,
The other in humble domesticity
A child playing at her feet.
Both cut off from the others world
One wonders what has changed
Are women any happier today
Combining two distinct domains.

I guess there are pros and cons
For all us women folk
Times when life fulfills ourselves
Others when we'd throttle throats.
Children need to be born
To continue the human race
We all need to put them first
So they can enjoy their race.

Love Maryx


My four children survived their upbringing
To be creative , loving individuals .
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
Lady you stand at the end
Where entrance meets daylight
Under the red brick archway
Between the buildings,
A white cap hides your hair
And the Dutch costume
Is of yesterday.
Silhouetted in geometry
Your profile senses thought
Far out in the distance
Where hopes and dreams reside.
You are as ancient as humanity
Womenkind contemplating
Their singularity,
Waiting for time
To eclipse this solitude.

Love Mary

From Pieter De ***** The Courtyard Painting
National Gallery London.
16 lines
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
Separated from the outside,
The world of masculinity
And paid labour
The mother and child
Seemingly secure.
Only the sky, glimpsed between
Overhanging branches, lights
This secluded kitchen plot
Where vegetables are washed
And the broom sweeps clean
The tiled yard.
The space between diagonals
Creates triangles of intimacy
Here the little Dutch girl
Looks tenderly upwards
At the female figure
In white apron and cap.
The foreground is reversed
For this activity is a hidden
Place
Where the warmth of yellow
Echoes the harmony
Of a domestic idyll.


Love Mary ***
From The Courtyard painting by Pieter de *****
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
When I look at a painting
A woman I see
Reflected in the glass
Standing behind me.
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
You play so lightly pretty maid
If I touch you, what would you say
So near, I hear a heart beat
Feel your breathing on my face.

And the sunlight caresses your sleeve
At this beauty I barely breathe
My fingers creep towards yours
And you ignore me and do play.

I can feel you lift those fingers
Oh so slowly on the keys
And I want you there to need me
But you stare straight in front.

Now I am earnest in this warm light
And your black pinafore falls as a dove
Oh so soft is the velvet covering
Curled around you gentle love.


Yet do you not hear me in this stillness
Where the words go unsaid
Is the music your only love dear?
For my passion is outsaid.

On the blue chair I will sit you
Press open your knees
Find my fingers in your underskirts
Rub you tenderly with my sheath.

Yet you keep playing in the sunlight
While I hold deep my breath
And my panting is becoming audible
As I look at your *******.

Yet I fear this is useless as my ardour is strong
But for you pretty lady my love appears wrong.



Love Maryxx
Inspired by Vermeer painting The Music Lesson
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
Light falls softly its mellow tints
Caressing all that is touched
A girl in traditional Dutch dress
Holds back her tears ,and,
Placing finger tips
On the keys she begins to play
A quiet melody.

We cannot see her sadness
For it is hidden by position
So she cries in silence
To the mirror above
The rectangle of answers
And to her left a young man
Watches, without a word to offer.

Love Mary x
After Vermeer The Music Lesson
 Mar 2018
Mary Gay Kearns
In the quiet of the evening she plays to him
As the light slips into mellowness
Creating that peace before dark
He loves to listen as she rocks him
Wraping him in the beauty of her world.

Her fingers take up this time of day
Filling the room with lost emotions
Embracing, as she does, his tempo
This union of friendship which is theirs
Held together by bars of notes in a room.


Love Mary ***
After Vermeer The Music Lesson

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