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Steve Wey

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The Black Rose

(For Georges Braque)

This Rose is a Rose as black as black has never been. As black a black as the Bible black and Crow black of poetry but in a picture. No absence of light this but a living presence it breaths on the canvas. It’s gravity pulls the world towards it — a vortex that sucks in LEMONS, a CUP, an APRICOT and my Eyes.

This Rose is not a Rose. Is it your wound? Your own red lifesblood poured out in 1915 and left you stuffed in your room. Stuffed with your Lemons and your birds and your Antique tables with only the space to bend — the Living space. So you peel it back like the skin of a fruit, pluck it like a petal, chisel it like the cool, white Marble or the Nut brown, coarse grained wood. And it holds your life together as surely as it binds the Apricot to the table top.

This is a world where everything STANDS FOR ITSELF. And in doing so it becomes SOMETHING ELSE. As free as the Bird that flies through your paintings — reality flows — images transform — forms merge. The black of the Black Rose joins the black of the cup joins the black shadow of the Lemon, the Apricot, the Fruit bowl. The space curves round to capture the eye, the hand reaches out to pull back the table cloth. THE WAR THAT KILLED AUGUST MACKE, FRANZ MARC AND WOUNDED YOU TOUCHES ME.

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