Love Poems in a Painting

A small box of poems that I saved for over 40 years, was so precious that when I sold or gave away almost everything I owned in 2017, I kept it. The poems, some admittedly trite and over the top, are cherished for the feelings, hope, and desire, they captured when I was 16 to 20 years old. Most were about romance and love, but others were about how things like sunsets, snowfall, and morning mist, moved me – and how I felt God’s presence in all of it. 

Recently, I sat back and re-read my poems and I liked the innocent, hopeful, and sensitive girl-woman I was back then. Amazed and grateful that 40-plus years later, the same things still move and inspire me, I realized that incorporating my poems into a painting would be a meaningful way to give them new life, and in the process, perhaps become a beacon of love to enrich my own.

Here are a couple of poems that are embedded in the Love Poem painting:

Beauty

The beauty so fills my heart

   it expands in loving pain

to grasp more than it can understand

   and love more than it knows.

This is the way I feel

   when a single star brings on the night

when I look at you

   when I hold our son

      ….when I think of God.

Physics

Liquid fire

  rushes

head to toe

  and suddenly

I’m very aware

  of me

     of you

No longer are you just

   some man

chemistry acknowledges

   a perfect solution

tingles and smiles

   you look very good to me

Anytime you’re ready

   I’ll be happy to comply

     With physics

Creating the Love Poem Painting – The Process

I started with a 5’ x 4’ screen-printed canvas that I picked up for free on the side of the road. Interestingly, a week before I found the canvas, I was thinking that it might be fun to try painting something big. I was so excited when I found the canvas that I had my Dad take a photo of me with it. What a great example of how quickly manifestation can work when we’re unattached to the outcome.

Right from the beginning, I knew I wanted to take a mixed media approach, so I began by gluing to the canvas, bits of newsprint and colored paper that were laying around the studio.

I freely painted over the entire canvas, using vermilion red as a symbol of love and passion, as well as my favorite mid-tone to dark aubergine purples.

Next, I selected about 20 of my poems and collaged them onto the painting using Liquitex Gloss Medium. I mostly used handwritten poems versus typed poems, as I felt more of my energy and heart within them. Before I glued them to the canvas, I photographed each poem, ensuring that I still had a copy. 

Using watered-down tinted purple, I painted over some sections. In close-ups, you can see where the ink from the poem bleeds a bit. 

Once the paint and glue were dry, I covered some of the poems with frisket film, to protect them from the heavier layers of paint, drips, and marks that I would be adding.

A close-up of A Gold Band, one of the few typed poems in the Love Poem painting:

I love visual texture, so my process is one of adding layers of paint and then removing sections with paper towels, sandpaper, or hand sanitizer (rubbing alcohol). 

Here, I’ve added more layers of paint, drips, and marks – just playing and working intuitively.

A close up:

Here is the next layer of paint. At this stage, the poems are all mostly hidden under layers of paint. In some areas, I gently lifted the paint with a damp paper towel to reveal the poems below.

Me posing in front of the work-in-progress painting in a T-shirt my Dad had just sent me.

Onto this layer, I added verses from some of my favorite contemporary love songs (God Lent Me You and Kiss Me by Cara Marie, and Heaven by Kane Brown). As I no longer write poetry, this was my way of embedding current-day values and romantic feelings into the painting.

The full size painting with love song verses glued on:

If you look closely at the left-middle area of the above painting, you see an example of how my poems are still peaking through.  Zoom in and you can see the shiny edge of the frisket film in the top right corner of the photo below. The frisket has kept the paint from completely obscuring the poem.

Carrying on, I continue to add more layers of paint, drips, and marks. Still working intuitively, I feel the nudge to add flower shapes.

At this stage, the painting was invited to hang at the Street restaurant in Exeter, NH for six months:

When it came back to me, I needed to re-connect with it and so I containued painting.

I was inspired to add some of my handpainted collage and tissue paper. It’s beginning to feel like a garden of love!

And, here is the final verison of the Love Poem painting:

In the close-up photos, you can still see portions of the poems.

The Love Poem painting is available for purchase at https://nataliemarquis.com/product/love-poem-50-x-40/

Natalie Eve Marquis is an accomplished acrylic mixed media artist with a passion for color, texture, and creating art that evokes a sense of wonder and delight. With over 30 years of experience as a painter and 3 years as a professional artist, Natalie has developed a unique artistic style invites the viewer to experience nature in a truly magical way, igniting the senses and inspiring the imagination.

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