We were riding fast with all the windows open heading for
that slice of horizon just between sky and mountain were freedom collides with
inexcusable containment frozen in concrete limitations of social expression
while the road disappears at the edge of vision and we are riding street legal
with all the tricks as the asphalt singed the rubber and the radio crackled
news of reasons to never turn back and you only have so many years to reach the
space where the shackles of reality can’t touch you before it ends again and
you have to start all over again and the gas gauge drops another notch while
the horizon stays just beyond reach like a rainbow hiding a pot of gold and we
sing all the songs we can remember the lyrics or make up our own and let the
wind carry the damage of living too fast too free and somewhere in a dream of
splash right before the street united the hard won experience of knowing better
but never caring with a touch of bittersweet wisdom that you only go around
once before you go around again and the wheels keep turning and the sky keeps
yawning deep blue sparks of horizon into the ghetto mind of carnival sideshow
sensory gratification while the Candy Man just smiles from his rocking chair by
the door and the lucky get what they need and the sky dreams of black and white
reality airplanes looking for love while the pencil marks render dark smudges
of motion beneath a white stick of oil pastel and the ink marks the space
between centrifugal motion of brush and surface splash again the paper as the
pigment of watercolor sings of going up Third and cutting across Vine which
can’t happen any longer or at least not in downtown Knoxville where they
destroyed the waterfront where the black people used to set up for market and
the Candy Man left for Venus on a freight train heading south and all the bored
and frustrated housewives have hope that the Candy Man will come back and give
them that treat of excitement again but the road keeps singing and the street
songs keep flowing past the gutter and into nothing beyond the empty silence of
what is and what will be isn’t how it was any more and the fingers smudge the
greens and blues of freedom into a sky above purple mountains as the fuel gauge
blinks an E
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“Street Legal”
Pencil,
conté crayon, charcoal, pastel, oil pastel, watercolor and ink
12 x 9 inches | 30.5 x 22.9 cm | 50 lb acid free Canson
paper
November 6, 2013
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"Street Legal" video of the creation of the art work.
For more information about the work of Oliver Loveday, visit Loveday Studio.
