This is one of my favourite paintings by Michael Whelan 🙂
I love greenery and the colour green — I can’t tell you why. But I find looking at greenery soothing and when you have golden light running through the green, I find it especially calming/enticing. So, I love how the sunlight plays over the grass in this artwork, and the slight golden edging to the slit in the wall towards the top right seems magical to me. Yes, I love golden lighting 😍
Then there are the tiny little details that you might not notice at first — well, at least not at the sizes I’ve seen the painting at 🙂 The tiny little flowers that dot the landscape, the myriad of stones making up the wall, and the little yellow butterfly directly in the path of the sunbeam. I could stare at this painting for hours!
And I do marvel at the skill that can produce a painting like this and the amount of concentration that would be needed to paint each of those stones in the wall with painstaking detail. I don’t have that kind of concentration. I love good artwork but have never been able to draw well and I think one of the issues is that I get bored of adding in all the little details and all the work necessary to make a piece of art look this good. So hats off to Michael!
Given how much I love this painting, it came naturally to mind when it was time to do another poem. And, here’s that poem.
Portal
by Fahim FarookDreaming, streaming, golden gleaming,
Sunlight dappled the grass, cheerily beaming.
Hark, there a nightingale sings,
Gliding the air waves on silent wings.The golden amber honeyed light beckons you on,
To a barely seen world hidden in the mist yon.
Is it a land that time forgot?
Or a forgotten isle, or a desert hot?Maybe it’s a portal to a fairy-land,
Where everything’s magical, nothing’s bland.
Or mayhap it’s a far future place,
Glittering towers yearning for the sky’s embrace.Any doorway can be a portal to a magical place,
Unbounded by time or space.
Your imagination is the magical wand,
Transporting you from reality to beyond.
