Purple Rain

In today’s blog post we will look at a few of my recent art pieces and see what they provide as fodder for further investigation.

Lets’ start with the feature image which I have called Purple Rain. Purple Rain has its roots as a song by Prince, but it has become a metaphor or symbol for emotional transformation, love, and spiritual guidance during times of sorrow or upheaval.

As I was creating an abstract painting I saw purple spots amongst the rough orange-red background. It reminded me of purple rain drops, so I titled the piece with this name. To add to the feelings of the moment, I blended in an image of my father when he was a very young man. My father was an alcoholic and killed himself when he was 47 years old. I was 25 years old at the time. I had already been long into my own recovery, via Al-Anon and other such things, but I remember the day we found out about his suicide and the finality of what he did – how he would never know the wonders to come, and we would never get to have the relationship we might have, if he had ever found sobriety and recovery himself. Suicide is sure hard on the ones left behind, as I am sure you know. I wasn’t expecting this to be the subject of this art piece when I started, but I do occasionally think about the old man. Just recently my brother and I had a chat about him and how his appearance or lack thereof affected us throughout our lives. It was an interesting chat, with both of us having had different experiences, with the occasional overlap.

My dad had another son after he left us and started a second family. I am not too keen on how much the son from the other family looks so much like my father in this picture. I’ll have to give some thought as to why that bothers me. Perhaps it is just a reminder of how he left us and started anew elsewhere. Probably that simple.

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Light a Candle – Created by Don Cheke

Light a Candle is the name of an acoustic guitar piece by William Elwood. It is a song on one of the Narada albums I have enjoyed over the years. It was while listening to this song, and with the title in mind that I started experimenting with a palette of five colors using digital oil paint. I then added an image of a brick wall and blended it in to get the surprising results seen in the image above. Although the painting at this point seemed sufficient on its own, I decided to add a drawing of a young girl I had made years ago. Although sweet and cute, the head and shoulder wrap was/is indicative of sorrow and poverty. Light a Candle asks for the pain to be eased or removed. The wall in the image, like the wall in the Pink Floyd song, is high and feels insurmountable.

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Borders – Created by Don Cheke

Borders began with ten watercolor washes laid down as seen above. The meeting edges were then blended to make them fade into one another. I added the white pen lines and then a blurred shadow underneath to define borders. I added and blended a tile texture to simulate plots of land within the various boundaries. I decided to call this piece Borders to help conjure up feelings within the viewer. What feelings does this image stir up for you?

I think the borders add an interesting look, like puzzles pieces, but I also feel that borders are created to make divisions – in land, between people, or many other things. It usually means, more often than not, that someone else is not welcome, which can contribute to global unease.

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We just had our Thanksgiving celebration here in Canada. Denise and I had a very nice potluck supper with our Saskatoon-based family to celebrate the occasion. It was very nice!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Donald B. Cheke – Saskatoon, SK