Silent Speech
March, 1987
A description of a painting written for the Writing Seminar class at Mount Anthony Union High School.
Copyright © 1997 Property of Deborah K. Fletcher. All rights reserved.
The piece is primarily painted in dark, somber shades. The forms and composition
are unsettling, yet, somehow, appealing. It is a work of harsh lines and colours, with a unity
which makes it pleasing to the eyes.
The focal point of the piece is a pair of bronze-coloured lips, which seem to draw
the other elements in to the center. The lips are strongly highlighted, although the only light
which is visible is in the form of rays, radiating from a deep purple orb.
The background is a series of hard, angry lines which overlap and join. The upper
ground is black and dark gray, with the gray overlapping the orb. From the upper right, the
colours move through pastelline shades of gray, striking a sharp contrast with a pronounced
orange peak to right center.
The lower part of the painting is done in deep purples and blues, with gentler
contrasts than above. The lower right seems to hold a land formation, which curves up and left
to embrace a body of somewhat lighter water.
The center of the work is a band of yellow and orange, shocking and unsettling, yet
lending coherence to a piece with which it has little in common.
At center depth, the light rays seem to be refracted by the lips. They leave the orb
in straight bands, strike the lips, and shoot out again, this time fanning out, and seeming to come
off the canvas as they approach the right boundaries. These rays are a very pale lavender at
the orb, and at the edge of the canvas, fading and brightening to a warm, lemon, yellow as they
reach the lips from each direction.
This painting seems to speak of the incongruities of the spoken word in a world
where water, hills, mountains, and the void blackness of night speak eloquently of beauty and
contrast without aid of human articulation. It speaks also of the emphasis and attention which
the spoken word receives, leaving the speech of nature in darkness and obscurity.
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