Random Acts of Art, #3
From Fullness
i set up my travel studio
this morning
in our blackwater falls state park cabin
in west virginia
shortly after learning
that my sister-in-law linda
died last night.
a photo reference from a predawn walk
wraps me in a hug,
nudges me to paint
from the fullness of my heart—
quickly, unhesitatingly, gesturally—
phthalo blue, payne’s gray,
and titanium white,
a bittersweet palette: tears, pain, and joy.
new day begins.
—dotty seiter
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Wenham Post Office, Tendercrop Farm, M&T Bank ATM vestibule
~4 x 5.25″; acrylic, ink, watercolor pencil, and collage on paper
#7 in a series of Random Acts of Art abstract florals
2025
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Notes about poem and art:
• I revisited the Coursera poetry class I took in June to see if I’d left any loose ends. I reread the very first prompt: The Found Poem: Grab a paragraph of text from a book or on the web and make a found poem by breaking it into lines. A poem is more than line-broken prose, but this exercise can help you experiment with rhythm and sound quickly. I decided to follow this prompt a second time by selecting a blog post of my own from October 2015 to generate a found poem today, ten years down the line. “From Fullness” is that poem, and my heart is lifted up remembering Linda, remembering how much I loved laughing with her.
• In late September I ‘hid’ the last four of my eight Random Acts of Art in plain sight. As with the first four, releasing my art in this way was energizing and uplifting and just plain fun! Then They Sang They Hymns; Big Ol’ Smiles on They Faces; Swayin’ Together in the Breezy Mornin’; and Shinin’ Bright have now fledged. The Aubuchon Hardware paint swatches display was an especially satisfying spot to tuck a colorful painting!
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13 responses to “Random Acts of Art, #3”
Love the photos of the places where you placed your artwork. Hidden and revealing at the same time.
I loved that excercise and was thinking that maybe that maybe the best way to make some poetry. Writing down my thoughts in a prose form and then making them into a free verse poem.
Love the integration of clipped scripts and the overall piece, and of course the swirls of white!
If you remember let me know when the next “Random Acts of Art” will be!
Carol, hiding my random works of art in plain sight offered such an energizing mix of playfulness, connection, and flow. I think Amanda Evanston’s Random Acts of Art is an annual event on the Saturday closest to her birthday in September; this year the ‘official’ day for dispersing the art far and wide was the 20th. I was away then and hadn’t completed my 8 paintings so I did my dispersing late in September. You can do it anytime!
Thanks for your feedback on “Shinin’ Bright.” Amanda’s guidelines for painting always help keep me looser and less fussy than when I’m left to my own devices. I loved tearing bits of text from magazines and ‘painting’ with them, along with using a fine-line applicator to swirl some white paint : )
Shifting prose to poetry has been a decades-long practice for me. Using it as a technique with one’s own prose opens many doors. After determining line breaks, even if you stay with free verse, you can revise and enhance by implementing various poetic devices, e.g. slant and/or internal rhyme, a simile or metaphor, heightened imagery.
You know I love all of this! And I agree…the piece tucked in the red paint swatches was brilliant! Shinin’ Bright….is doing its name justice! Such fun you are having and thank you for sharing it with us….and your community.
Your poem is powerful..and describes a random act of art from a place of love.
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I haven’t been back to Aubuchon to see if Shinin’ Bright got scooped up from the red paint swatches display at the hardward store—it’s fun to imagine someone in the store looking for just the right red for an accent wall and then discovering a painting to display in the room with the red wall : )
Thanks for the words you used to frame my act of painting on the morning I learned of sister-in-law Linda’s death. You can see the painting here https://dottyseiter.blogspot.com/2015/10/from-fullness.html.
WOW! Has it really been that long? Paint me lucky! xoxo
xoxo
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