Rose

This work, combining visual, written, and auditory elements marks a step in the realm of 'Master'' for this artist. Her background in all of these areas of artistry is on full display here. The visual elements are rich in texture, color, and compositional perfection. The bleeding of the dark flower petals, echoed by the degraded paper and the tea bled parchments reach out with organic grace to the viewer; and are then lightly seasoned with the scattering of what this critic is assuming is the fine ground dust of confectioner's sugar. The pen drives it's dark presence through the combination, placed not with steadied hand and intent but as if let go with reluctance or disregard or in surrender, and lying as it does, beneath a single petal, the message left is clear it fell earlier.

The visual elements sans text would stand on their own merits as a work of a Master artist. However they are buttressed by the presence of the artist's poetry. The poetry is the story of the image, the addition to it of sound and thought that only spoken word is capable of carrying. Read these words out loud, you MUST. The left side of the brain desires to be utilized to feel its way through this beautiful maze. The poetry is rhythmical, elegant, expressive on both and intellectual and emotional level. Possessed of internal rhyme and pace, it also would thrive unsupported. The author has chosen precisely the proper words to touch the reader deeply, and precisely to create a flow of thought and emotion as complex as the visual construction possesses.

I have not reviewed the artist's stock selections to see exactly what the natural components provided. I am unfamiliar with stocks and visual deviation toolsets to a large degree. While I am familiar with the general visual toolset, and become more so with time, I needn’t hold a sable brush, or smell oil and volatiles to witness the expressive gestures of a Master. Gesture combined perfectly in all of its possibilities, Hand with colors and composition, eye with composition and visual flow, mind with technique and selected word and meanings exposed, and mouth and ear with the dance of sound.
There remain but two inquiries from this critic; first, the lettering font and lettering on the image seem at odds with the visual device, but having encountered difficulties utilizing an unsupported font, my I ask, what font type and point size were employed. While the scatterings and separations and alterations of point spacing do participate in the visual composition with effect, I somehow fear that I am not obtaining all of the impact of the original as constructed by the artist.

The last question, and posed by the artist herself, the adornment of the work by its single word title, capitalized. It works perfectly Master artist, it possesses mixed and uncertain possibilities and leaves the reader and viewer with the sense of it serving dual utility. The flower of course, there, in view and spoken component, but the possibility of a personage, a name, a direction, and an activity strongly inviting the curiosity inspired by the work to remain.

Each of these elements of the work is strong and firm and tall enough to stand alone, but joining together to produce an 'other' quality, this critic knows. Brava Mater Artiste, Brava.

Amanda Graham
January the Twenty Seventh day, Two Thousand and Twelve