Expressions of a Dauber

By: Lavar Posted on: May 05, 2004

They say that love comes from the heart, but expression comes from the soul. Where the deep secrets spill out like flowers on a hillside; covering, overlapping, bringing to life that which once sat dry and bare. Sometimes in song; lyrically woven bits of melodic beauty, which spring forth from the soul with majestic energy; rising upon the wind and twisting through the treetops in a hybrid dance under the moonlight. Others in stories; artistically crafted tales of heroes and warriors, of romance and victory; passed down from generation to generation. Tales, which replay the ages of old of Seleucarian wars and a desperate defense against an evil which mere words, can only half describe. Still others express themselves in building, sculpting, and creating… weaving magic across the waves of reality to birth new ideals and advance a particular position.

But this one is a dauber; a painter. A rare breed in these parts of Achaea where strength and might over-shadow the poetic. Where wisdom is measured by the sweat of one's brow before the grey on one's crown. This dauber speaks in brush strokes and colors. With images and lines he dreams of happier days, when he was young and adventurous. Days gone by of lazy hours spent… well… dreaming. Growing up just west of the Aelan forest; immersed in the shadow of the mighty Vashnars, along with his cousin Quartus, he would spend his time traversing the jagged rocks, dispersed with deep caves, which offered a cool resting spot out of the blazing Great Light. Or perhaps running through the trees, stopping now and then to peer under the brush or beneath logs for whatever one might find hidden.

Even now, sitting at his easel with brush in hand, the Dauber can hear the sweet sounds and smell the delicious fragrances of those days. And with those images in mind… he paints. What at first looks like a thin layer of medium-sized potatoes in a flat-bottomed tin basin, with loose earth shaken over them to lightly disguise their shape; begins to emerge into a beautiful landscape of his childhood home. Gentle rolling mounds with crevices between, large enough to conceal each it's own stream and huddle of trees. Each mound then dotted for color with brown-checkered patterns of fields, small and particular in its crop grass, and plow. The whole expanse begins to laugh with individual white dots of cottages and roads, until it looks nothing unlike the assembly of white foam caps when a fresh breeze is on the sea in mid-summer.

Taken further, the sky isn't casting the normal hard light over the landscape, but instead a paler, softer, blurred along the edges glow seems to cast upon it, covering it with watery gleams, deepening it, making it unsubstantial to the casual glance. And beyond this, so remote that they seem fantastically abrupt, at the very limit of your vision, he creates the mighty Vashnars. They are no stragglers. They are steep and compact and pointed and toothed and jagged. They seem to have nothing to do with the little hills and cottages that divide the viewer from their base. With a hint of blue and violet, they appear a bit… transparent – as if huge sheets of gauze had been cut out into mountainous shapes and hung up there so that you could see through them the light of the invisible sea at their backs.

Afterwards, with a sigh, he leans back. The brush long since ceased its movement (and he having lost himself within the portrait for such a time that the bristles had begun to harden). He smiles at the corners of his mouth, while gazing upon his creation like a proud parent to the child's first tentative steps. Yes, he is content as the years draw to a close. Although not known by many (even you, the Reader, have undoubtedly found yourself asking others the identity of this poet), he has lived… truly lived. No medals of valor adorn his walls, and no stories will be told around gathering fires for years to come, which bear his name. But, he can rest in peace knowing that true legends are born out of the average eye… and can only be found by those aware enough to look in the right places.