Schaefer Portrait Challenge

January 16–March 18, 2018
Schaefer International Gallery
Maui Arts & Cultural Center
One Cameron Way, Kahului
MauiArts.org

Poetry by Lali Groth

Rembrandt paid homage with honest likeness and turpentine.
In these islands we find portraiture blooming
with what’s ordinary and with gratitude
sometimes like a snapshot—sundrenched,
a child’s shovel trailing across the sand,
singing, “This is us”—or a glimpse
of the things we carried.
A selfie leaves its image exponentially,
but here the artist’s self is mounted anachronistically
on silk—scribbled in vermillion and black sumi ink.
Takemoto, like Basho or Kerouac, emotes and winks,
“Who am I—this person I think I know best,”
and answers “Hah?!” in a passing breath.
How do we reveal the interior of another?
Do color and brushstroke suffice?
Picasso says, “Are we to paint what’s on the face,
inside the face or what’s behind it?”
Vermeer’s women are self-contained,
inviolate, housed alone in light
as is the alla prima Katarina, elusive
as a breaking wave
immediate and untouched.
Whether with mesa clay or Styrofoam,
the artist coils or chisels to
bring one’s nature form.
Mark making is an ancient urge.
To remember, to record, is it
in our soul’s code to create and preserve?
Let these portraits hold our places
as we dissolve and move on.