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Parole Day, Acrylic on Canvas by Ani King


Imagine a painting right here on the wall behind you: imagine it is the work of an artist who has just been released from prison. Imagine that in leaving, they have just remembered how to love trees, how to savor the way green crumbles under scrutiny into black and ochre, imagine how the green rises into rough edged fir trees and bursts brighter into oaks and brighter still into reaching birch trees, all that green is really layers of ultramarine, yellow oxide, a rusty crimson, each stroke brightened with more of one color, weighted with another. Imagine the sky takes up the whole top half of the painting, imagine the sky is so blue it hurts to look at, imagine this is the most honest part of the painting, expressed in cerulean, cobalt, manganese, and Prussian blues, and imagine the artist, former prisoner, painting this sky over the complication of trees that we call a forest, and imagine you can’t see the sun in the painting, but you know it’s there, imagine the painter sitting in a chair outside, no fences, loose in their body, no guard towers to break up the landscape with their long shadows, imagine a day abundant with light, no flickering fluorescents, imagine the long-missed smell of ferns and wildflowers and exhaust from the cars driving by, imagine the artist signing their painting, imagine the painting is signed with a name reclaimed from numbers, that it rises from the corner in a long swoop and blends itself into the forest which is joined with the sky which is just waiting to be imagined by this prisoner’s eye.


 

Author's Note:

I have always liked to find a quiet place to be still and read every day, which is sometimes for re-centering and sometimes for escape, and when I need to move, I go for a lot of walks so I can look at trees--I'm stupid for trees, y'all--and I love listening to music. I lose myself in Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi's Four Seasons intentionally on a lot of my walks; I always liked the original well enough, but something about this version pulls out elements in a slightly different way and I find myself absolutely entranced every time.  


 

Ani King (they/them) is a queer, gender non-compliant writer, artist, and activist from all over Michigan. More of their work can be found at aniking.net, and they can usually be found looking for a place to quietly finish a book without interruptions.





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