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Rosalind Hudis

The Artist Mixes Color in the Renaissance

Don’t think of me as lime-robed and lost in undailiness. I come with sleeves rolled up worker in a mire of substance. Yes, I stink! I chew on a rotted wafer — dry fish glue my saliva in the mix. How else stretch the hue of some frosty cleric? My paints are part kill: rabbit skin, horse hoof, pig’s blood. I knife, mine, grind, churn, pound, steep, sweat my way to that primal blue you worship. When you varnish me with meaning, remember the grit under my nails, the fumes. Green comes from the labor camps you made for your longing. And that hair-coiled girl resolved from light. She’s no photo-shopped pink fix. She took on the earth to coagulate: egg-yolk, red clay, mineral, marble dust. Do you think, if she looked up she wouldn’t roar with the energy of her roots?