The Art of Teetering

Watercolor on paper
12″ x 18″
Currently unframed.
Custom framing available.

Contact me if you are interested in this painting. Locals, existing patrons and members of my creative groups receive special pricing.

I have had a round of poor health over the past month and a half, always a reminder of how precarious life is. I tried to capture that precariousness, and the joy we try to hold on to, even when things are not inherently joyful.

A few days after finishing this, I wrote a poem to the painting. Here it is”

The Art of Teetering

It is not what you wish for.
You want solidity. Certainty.

It is not what you wish for,
but it is the nature of your life,

shifting seas, shifting sand,
the earth beneath your feet dances,

the people, places, things, opportunities,
rise and fall like mountains. Only faster.

Faster than you can dance.
But dance you do,

Mr Bojangles in double time,
table dancing in the midst of a barfight,

growing better with age,
finding the rhythm of chaos,

Of balancing and rebalancing
to music rarely your own

until you discover the solidity you seek
is not in the world,

but the dance.

About this poem

The other night the woman I love and I were talking about all the changes in our life over the past decade. That led to the painting I did last week, which led to this poem this morning.

Tom