Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. Art. This is a collaborative collection of paintings by Marsha Solomon and complementary poetry by Stanley H. Barkan. FROM RHYTHM TO FORM utilize the interplay of jewel-like colors, the variation of opacity from soft washes to thick strokes of impasto and positive and negative spaces to create a dynamic image, born from nature, emotion and creative force. Line, color, and form unite on her canvasses to create an atmospheric, mystical space, infused with energy balanced by serenity.
Artists are our seers. Poets are our truth tellers. When the two reflect on the same themes, new portals of understanding, emotion, and vision open. In this collection of paintings and poetry, artist Marsha Solomon's ethereal, evocative abstractions and Stanley H. Barkan's contemplative, soulful poems present landscapes of the imagination. Marsha Solomon lives and works in New York. Her artwork has been presented in museums and galleries in the US and Europe, and has been the subject of seven solo exhibitions. Critics have described her paintings as reminiscent of Helen Frankenthaler, Henri Matisse, and classical Japanese Sumi-e, and as repositories of the spirit. Stanley H. Barkan is a poet and publisher in New York. His poems have been translated into 28 languages and published in 25 collections. Barkan, a passionate promoter of the written word, has read and organized readings at the United Nations, the Yale Club, and Poets House in New York, and in venues from China to Italy and Bulgaria. In 2016, he was awarded the European Poetry & Art Homer Medal (Poland/China).--Mary Gregory My series of abstract paintings titled FROM RHYTHM TO FORM began when I started to use thinned acrylic paint as color stains to form a central atmospheric shape. These 'Centers, ' existing at first as fields of pure color emerging from an undefined ground, would then be shaped by semi-opaque passages of paint where the texture and dramatic gesture of the surrounding strokes would contrast with the smooth effect of the stain. In relating these circular motifs to the rectangular format, I am involved in how the spatial effect of colors, their placement and sequence, lets the painting breathe and transforms it into an imaginary space where the power of suggestion resides in the expressive capacity of color and form.--Marsha Solomon