Honorable Mention
Hey Jude
DESCRIPTION
This photo was taken of the process of a painting that was outside for 3 weeks in the spring storms of 2020. The reflections of the trees in the dye / rain puddles as the sunlight danced on the surface of the painting was mesmerizing. The following is a prose poetry account of the process. The purple had become puddles, the gold that had dried had stayed on the mountain, the copper pink sank so I flung more into the water, like washing into a great birth of stars. The blue glass was bare so I dashed on some gold which swirled into the stream like neutron stars colliding and showering the cosmos with gods. Purple poured on the small stone, the one stone to step across the stream, swording the violet gold silted lakes. The blue outside the ring was dirty with rusty sand and nails so I peppered it with a young Venetian azzurra that immediately became old in the downpour.
I stopped, felt the rain water going through to my shoulders, now the morning had washed away the dream, but now the dreamer was washing away the morning, and I realized, neither was washed away. It was all there, in the water, unfixed, unlike it ever was or ever would be, swimming together like Orca in the Amethyst milk.
The white- time- had all but disappeared, again and again.
Perhaps it wasn’t meant to stay in this moving bead,
but dissipate into an ever so faint brightening.
I heaved on the misshapen tractor tire and covered the center with a blue pearl canvas. I was wondering how I would tell you about the painting and the morning, a melody entered my thoughts that was always there -
Hey Jude.
AUTHOR
Neil Enggist of Swiss and Taiwanese descent, was born and raised in Princeton, New Jersey. His father was a stained glass artist and mother worked for the state. Growing up, Enggist drew, played soccer and saxophone. He studied fine arts at Washington University in St. Louis and Santa Reparata in Florence. For the next 20 years he followed the great performances of color into the mountains, canyons, coastlines, and rivers across the US, Europe, China, and India. His ‘Nature action paintings’ are composed within a system of nature, performing ecologically harmonic phrases in a tidal conversation between human spirit and the wild. Enggist earned his MFA at San Francisco Art Institute in 2016 where he made paintings on steel in the tidal zones of the Bay Area incorporating ideas of performance and sculpture embedded in the earth art movement. Enggist has participated in a number of art residencies including the Lucid Art Foundation in Point Reyes, CA, and journeyed to the land of his grandmother to paint in Shanghai and the Yellow Mountains in 2019. Through his travels, Enggist developed a body of painting and poetry shown in New York, Milan, Mumbai, Luzern, and Paris. Along the way he saw Bob Dylan in concert around 40 times. During Several summers he worked with master gardener, Andre Ammann, realizing landscape projects around Luzern. In 2020 Enggist painted between NJ and SF, painting in the Sequoia forest, Lands End, Yosemite, Trinity River, Big Sur, the Central Valley, writing a book of mystical Love poetry. He currently paints and makes stained glass in Taos, New Mexico with his wife, artist Ziggy Khan, working together on a multi-media album weaving memory, music, painting, skiing, meditation, and poetry inspired by Japanese tanka, also painting and showing in Switzerland and Italy. 