Issue 26: | 1 Jan. 2025 |
Poem: | 130 words |
Everything is expressed through relationships.
—Piet Mondrian*
When a tree in winter stands alone against a field of white and gray bereft of leaves, and the sky can barely be distinguished from the ground, you can see what’s underneath its spring and summer spangles or fall’s showy hues to the branches, so like the fretwork of veins and bones beneath my human skin. This web of light, network of lines and arcs, teaches me to see the tree has never truly stood alone, although it seemed to. Mondrian couldn’t have known how trees send signals through tangles of mycelium, nourish their saplings, sing to the grass. Yet here, we see the world as trees must see it, light feathering the air, falling to the frozen earth.
The Gray Tree (oil on canvas, 1911) by Piet Mondrian
Held by Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, the Netherlands.
Image was downloaded from Wikipedia on 23 December 2024:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Tree
*Publisher’s Note:
Epigraph by Dutch painter and art theoretician Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), who was among the greatest artists of the 20th century, appears in the Abstract Artist Bio at Vîrtosu Art Gallery:
“Everything is expressed through relationship. Color can exist only through other colors, dimension through other dimensions, position through other positions that oppose them. That is why I regard relationship as the principal thing.”
https://virtosuart.com/index.php/gallery/piet-mondrian (retrieved 12-23-2024)
Copyright © 2019-2025 by MacQueen’s Quinterly and by those whose works appear here. | |
Logo and website designed and built by Clare MacQueen; copyrighted © 2019-2025. | |
Data collection, storage, assimilation, or interpretation of this publication, in whole or in part, for the purpose of AI training are expressly forbidden, no exceptions. |
At MacQ, we take your privacy seriously. We do not collect, sell, rent, or exchange your name and email address, or any other information about you, to third parties for marketing purposes. When you contact us, we will use your name and email address only in order to respond to your questions, comments, etc.