KERRY MULVANIA HIRTH
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Picture
Ambiguous Sky 13X40 Pastel and pencil on paper
Ambiguous Sky is based on a performance of Domenico Scarlatti's Sonata K276 by Wladyslaw Klosiewicz on harpsichord.
There is a unique dividing line in the Sonata where f minor suddenly turns to F Major, and in the F Major section Klosiewicz suddenly releases a damper on the strings. The text on the painting refers to a line from a Rilke poem called Sunset. The break between earth and sky occurs at the dividing line you see on in the center of the painting.
Sunset
Rainer Maria Rilke


Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs--

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

Picture
A fantasy image of a sunset, or maybe a sunrise, inspired the theme of this painting. Credit for illustration, unknown.
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