It scattered the night is a companion piece to Still I Rise, and has been on my desk for a month or maybe more. I've been collecting ideas and bits of imagery about sunrises, sparkling skies and warm light, and this is what came out of them. Rather than try to gather my scattered thoughts today, I thought I would show its progress from start to finish, along with the quotes I've collected in my journal while working on it.
The sun - the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man - burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?
Rumi
Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes
John Lennon
All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
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I love the colour legends in old atlases, and often use them for inspiration in my paintings. |
It is not down on any map; true places never are.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
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| It scattered the night, Loretta Grayson 2015 Gouache on cotton rag paper, 23cm x 28cm |
It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
