Sarah Son-Theroux
PAINTINGS
Sarah Painting at Scorton Creek
To sketch a river is to bring into being,
inescapably, the land that it also drains.
What was originally whole with her deft
moves is suddenly, shockingly, in pieces,
water, banks, with no indexicality I see,
slopes, slanting plants, verdant grasses,
all the things she unravels, placing them
by transferal and a rapidly wisping brush
where one cannot quite see them anymore
as quite the way they were, including here
the rim of a small bridge by the river
under which she sits, separating grasses,
distant houses, water, banks, all in pieces,
small plants, nothing quite the way it was,
when all of sudden reformed and reaffirmed
and more than whole they reappear on canvas,
brought not only into being but transformed
by the integrating beauty of a human hand,
and we see at last, pleasure out of pain,
that she has put them back together again!
~ Alexander Theroux