Matt Beard

Evolution of Icarus

So… sometimes this happens. When I paint at live events, half the fun is not knowing exactly what I’m going to paint. Even as I’m loading my palette with paint I’m usually still wondering what’s going to happen. At RampArt Skatepark last weekend, this is what happened. Not sure what’s going on here, but one thing led to another and another and another and I guess that’s just how it goes.

The story of Icarus is pretty cool, a warning against pride, but while we mostly seem to focus on that aspect of the tale, we often forget his father’s warning wasn’t just about flying too high, but also too low. Get up off the ground and quit slacking, yeah? Good call. The flying fish has it wired I reckon.

Anyway, I’m sure anyone could read all sorts of other stuff into this, and so could I, but art is more poetry than essay, so I won’t go into all that.

Anyway, hope you dig this little unexpected homage to the master of this genre, Rick Griffin himself. Enjoy!

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Flow

It may look like a wave, but if you rotate this piece counter-clockwise it represents the real time wind conditions off the Pacific coast at the time the painting was being created. Check out earth.nullschool.net if you want to see what I’m talking about.

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Crab Haul

I painted this one years ago   
From a weathered photograph  
It was a Christmas gift  
From a daughter  
To her father  
  
She was a young child  
When the photo was taken  
From the Old Trinidad Pier 
Of her dad and his crew 
On his boat down below 
  
She said they ate good  
Really, really good that year  
I imagined them eating  
Juicy butter-dripping crab   
For every meal  
  
She just laughed  
After the lean years  
Of cornbread and beans  
This was the year  
Their ship finally came in  
  
They didn’t eat crab  
They ate whatever they wanted  
Wherever they wanted  
  
And you might be thinking  
Of a working-class family  
That just came into extra money  
  
And you might not be wrong  
  
But I’ll ask you right now  
To think of this young child  
Enjoying her family’s joy  
And remembering it  
After all these years  
After the photo is faded  
Tattered  
Torn around the edges  
Asking an artist  
To give that sweet memory  
Back to her father  
  
Now  
  
Tell me again  
When did their ship come in?  

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On the Rocks

Painted on site with the rising tide sending large amounts of saltwater all over my back and palette as I worked. There may not be blood, sweat, or tears in this one, but there is certainly a good dose of Pacific Ocean saltwater, and that’s almost the same thing from a salinity perspective…

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Insinuation IX: Where Once there was Only Sky

Rising up to heights intolerable
Between moments of relief
All too brief
Just when the final surge washes through
Rearranging the ground floor
Soaking the upholstery
With salt driven from the earth’s rotation
Glass breaking
Walls shaking
The record collection scattered like shells on the shore
Just when it’s too much to bear
As violently as it moved
Just as quickly it is over
And there is no sound to be heard
Above the chirping of birds
Except the voice of a helpless infants cry
Where once there was nothing but endless sky

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Insinuation VIII: Hope of Expectancy Surrendered

As joy turns to sorrow
And victory defeat
The batteries drained
The battering remains
A constant beat
Each pulse an increase of primordial pain
The hope of expectancy surrendered
Like broken water from a cloudburst in a heavy rain
Something gone wrong
The absence of light
This can’t be the way
That all is set right
The giver of life drained of the gift
The spark itself turned inside
The fire within is within another
A universe within this imploding star
Wrought in the worst of collapsing rhapsody
Written in verse of relapsing tragedy

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Insinuation VII: The Spin of the Sphere

The spin of the sphere
Is the beginning of fear
And where it leads none can follow
It’s tilted gait
Refuses to wait
As yesterday wars with tomorrow
And the lengthening days
The upper hand gains
And the bluebirds await the arrival
Of the victor’s scorn
Trampling the snowmelt
Of their opponent
Who retreats to the high mountains
Blocking lifeblood supply routes
And starving the proud of
Any further harvest celebration
Until the conquerors meakly succomb
To the darkest deprivation
But their season of starvation is also soon to pass
And the reason of the star’s ovation will not last

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Insinuation VI: Earth’s Shadow Not Yet Reaping

The lunar eclipse breathes its deepest shade of red
As the waters of earth rise up to meet the dying
A global procession
Where every drop offers
An honest confession
Of unending love
And weeps for the loss of their beloved’s white-blue light
These fluid mourning masses
Gather at the funeral parlor door
Awaiting a turn to glimpse
Her pale face once more
Gathered round in silence
Then a wondrous pause
Then thunderous applause
And there’s been no greater joy since
Her shadow only just sleeping
Earth’s shadow not yet reaping

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Insinuation V: No Escape Until Exhalation

Inhalation of numbers
A suspended matrix of love and tears
Sweat and pain
No solution for this equation
Just a problem of oxygen suspended in blood
Arriving from beyond the sea
To bring life however brief it may be
But with it arises
The conflict inside us
Carried by wind
Born of dust
Made of earth
Fragile and flammable
Unquenched and unbirthed
Ubiquitous by nature
The post-war riot an ethereal vibration
With no escape just escalation
No escape until exhalation

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Insinuation IV: Riding Shotgun in the Cardiac

As the plot thickens
The pulse quickens
Signals the release of adrenaline
The fight or flight
The might makes right
At heart it’s all just light
Emanating through nervous roots
Planted deep in the sinews
It’s neither sin nor is it news
Riding shotgun in the cardiac
Pumping beats to keep the blood moving
Regulating the pace of exchange
The old for new
The tired air for the thought of life
Some peace of mind for another
With roots of another kind

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Insinuation III: Sheet Music of Endless Revolutions

Pulsating depths collide with rock in steady rhythm
Rocksteady rhythms
Seafoam drifts that move in procession
Driven by the upwelling of time
Etching on the surface a crooked white line
A visible record of the upheaval
The sheet music of endless revolutions
Each blast is a rebellion
In search of freedom like water
Moving to this inexplicable beat
Dancing with the reckless abandon of oceans unknown
It’s the song we we fought and died for
We were bought and paid for
We were wrought and made for

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Insinuation II: Hunting Reverb for Survival

Molten harmonics signal the release of tension
The groaning of tectonic riffs
Played with the volume cranked to eleven
The subterranean chords of metal and rock circle their prey
Descending through chasms
Black air dripping with the sweat of earth
Waiting to shake its foundations
And strike
Hunting reverb for survival
And it hides by the deepest frequencies
Amplified by the frequently deepest seas

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Insinuation I: Lost in a Sea of Synapses

Dancing at will upon the innumerous grains
The finite brains of particulate philosophers
Who cannot through their centrifuges
Do anything other than remain on it’s surface
Grasping at photons
Missing the point
Marching lockstep in lines around the corner
Adrift in a city of relapses
Lost in a sea of synapses
Mentally sequencing the circuitry required
To awaken the silicon mined of earth
The silicon mind of earth

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Insinuation: Prologue

Rising and falling, the transfer of energy,
the simple wave is itself in nature prominent.
To look too close is to see only the thing
and miss the implications of its movement.
From here on no further mention made
of the object of our salted minds.
Just an attempt with light and with shade
to find it between the lines.

It will be what it will be

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