Blank Canvas, by Joan Kantor

Painter on His Way to Work, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands) 1888

Blank Canvas
                     
inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, Painter on his Way to Work, lost during WW 11

In his baggy blue-grey work clothes
and broad-brimmed yellow hat
this artist 
with canvas and tools on his shoulders and under his arm
and a prescient black shadow at his feet
was surrounded by fields of deep chartreuse and gold
a soft pale-green-aqua sky
and trees of rusty brown
on his way to work in Tarascon
walking on a sunlit cobblestone path
when he took a sudden wartime detour
and nobody knows for sure where he went

if he waited out the war
hidden in a cave
salt mine
flak tower**
or castle

or crumbled in flames
during allied bombings

was torched along with other art
at The Kaiser-Freidrich Museum
by retaliating Nazis 
in retreat

or was captured
by the Russians
and secretly sold
and now sits behind a velvet curtain
only to be seen in private viewings

All we have left
is a ghost
in a poor photographic image
absent the swirling thick signature texture
of brushstrokes*

but for me 
he still lives
on the walls of museums
in the vase of sunflowers’
swirling three dimensional layers
of russet, persimmon 
dark green and gold autumn tones 
or the blue off-kilter bedroom in Arles
with its hanging towel
and tilted portraits
that perhaps that day
he was on his way
to paint

Joan Kantor

* A photo reproduction of this painting exists, but due to the exceptional sharpness and clarity, the authenticity is suspect. It is also in colour, and most reproductions of Van Gogh's work were black and white.  It has never been officially discredited. 

** large, above-ground, anti-aircraft blockhouse towers in Nazi Germany

​Joan Kantor’s collections cover such varied topics as art, Alzheimer’s Disease, mental Illness, social justice, and the natural world. Her work took first place for poetry in both The 2013 Hackney Literary Awards and The 23rd Writers Digest Self-Published Book Awards Contests.  She performs as part of Stringing Words Together, a violin and poetry duo and also reads her work throughout New England and New York. Joan has also been both judge and mentor in The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival’s Fresh Voices Program. Having always seen the arts as enhancing one another, in her most recent project, Dual Impressions, she pairs original photos with her poems.