Pentimento

Ordinary Caravaggisti

Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash

Sometimes they miss the days
that haven’t come yet;
those perfectly shaped images
their artistic mind draw so many times
that seem like experiences already lived.
Painted on the “blue” canvas of the daily
“marathons” and “sprints”,
coloured by green hope and red desire,
those eydaimonic dreamwishes
replace life every day.
In the beginning, it seems that
the more these animated paintings
repeat their creation,
the more the redemption offered.
So, the “painters” miss them, in the end;
until… that turning point
where the desired experience
has been drawn and drawn so many times
that its arrival is already futile.
The just-dreaming painters
get enthusiastic and then bored
of something they spirally lived and re-lived
 — in their heads — ,
painting the dream over the wish,
with only slight differences each time,
according to the tension of the inner lack.
Those Caravaggisti get exhausted
by the antithesis between their paintings
and the one life paints for them “now”;
eaten up by the over-usage of chiaroscuro.
A strange feeling of being betrayed
breathes somewhere in a dark corner,
and deep inside,
they all want to return
to the only really blissful condition
they have ever experienced,
to that unique dark and quiet place
where no need for painting existed,
where effortless living
was the only thing they did;
in their mother’s womb.

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Pentimento: In painting, a pentimento (Italian for ‘repentance’; from the verb pentirsi, meaning ‘to repent’; plural pentimenti) is “the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over”. (source)

Caravaggisti: Term applied to painters who imitated the style of Caravaggio in the early 17th century. (source)
In the poem, I use the term metaphorically, like the word “painters”.

Chiaroscuro: In art is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. (source)

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Anthi Psomiadou — CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International : Credit must be given to the creator/ Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted/ No derivatives

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