- Apocalyptic Visions
The images in this portfolio were originally inspired by the eerie feeling of impending apocalypse in W. B. Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming. Later I realized that, for me, these images suggest mysterious dark emotions far beyond the scope of the poem. To my sensibilities, the portfolio does have a thematic coherence, but my efforts to express it have succeeded only in limiting its meaning. So I simply offer up the original inspiration and let the images speak for themselves.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
- William Butler Yates (1920-21)
Untitled (No. 14)
Untitled (No. 18)
Untitled (No. 5)- Untitled (No. 1)
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- Untitled (No. 15)
- Untitled (No. 8)
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- Untitled (No. 17)
- Untitled (No. 9)
- Untitled (No. 3)
- Untitled (No. 10)
- Untitled (No. 19)
- Untitled (No. 16)
- Untitled (No. 2)
- Untitled (No. 13)
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