Softness and Lightness 13X40 Pastel and pencil on paper

Softness and Lightness is based on a performance of Domenico Scarlatti's Sonata K253 by Orion Weiss.

Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli 31X42 Pastel and pencil on paper

Softness and Lightness represents the A section of Sonata K253, the first time through. Originally the pattern for this Sonata was worked out in a large rectangular painting called Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli, referring to the ancient song of troubadour Jaufre Rudel. What you see in Softness and Lightness is an enhanced version of the first line in the rectangular work. I believe there is a kind of warmth that arises from the delicate triplets, swollen, arching phrases, and fluttering ornaments in the sonata.

The title Softness and Lightness refers to two lines in W.B. Yeats' The Wanderings of Oisin. In this epic poem, the hero Oisin encounters a sleeping giant, who shakes a magical bell, which causes Oisin and his wife Niamh to sleep for 100 years.

His lips moved slowly in answer, no answer out of them came;
Then he swayed in his fingers the bell-branch, slow dropping a sound in faint streams
Softer than snow-flakes in April and piercing the marrow like flame.

Wrapt in the wave of that music, with weariness more than of earth,
The moil of my centuries filled me; and gone like a sea-covered stone
Were the memories of the whole of my sorrow and the memories of the whole of my mirth,
And a softness came from the starlight and filled me full to the bone.