A STARRY NIGHT AND HOW ABOUT THAT!
This is an original, digitally created 8x6 work on paper. It is signed and dated. Artspan also offers the print in unsigned, inexpensive prints. Click the Prints on Demand for that option. The print was adapted from my large acrylic painting.
The joyful man was a rodeo cowboy in the early 20th century. The original photo was black and white. I hand-colored it with photo oils and dyes. The words are adapted from Samuel Allen's poem about the Negro League's great baseball player Satchel Paige. TO SATCH. It is printed below. Allen was a lawyer, academic and poet whose pen name was PAUL VESEY. Born on December 9, 1917 in Columbus, Ohio, he was the son of a pastor and grew up “in the heart of the black community [never] insulated from its problems or deprived of its energies or resources.” He graduated from Fisk (a college I have a deep connection to, and love for) and Harvard Law. At Fisk he studied writing with Harlem Renaissance great James Weldon Johnson. After service in the segregated Army in WWII, he lived in Paris where he met many of the expatriot community, including Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Richard Wright, who was the first to publish Allen's work. Allen translated work of French writers, including Jean-Paul Sartre. Allen died June 27, 2015 in Boston at the age of 97. Poet laureate Dolores Kendrick wrote, “Sam Allen broke the bar. He traveled in his poetic genius not under the bar or over it, but beyond it. In his passing the world lost a sweet hallelujah for great poetry and the genius of a quiet man who gave to all things great and small.” Print of image available on www.peterjketchum.com
Sometimes I feel like I will never stop
Just go on forever
Till one fine mornin
I'm gonna reach up and grab me a handfulla stars
Swing out my long lean leg
And whip three hot strikes burnin down the heavens
And look over at God and say
How about that!!!! By PAUL VESEY (Samuel Allen)
The joyful man was a rodeo cowboy in the early 20th century. The original photo was black and white. I hand-colored it with photo oils and dyes. The words are adapted from Samuel Allen's poem about the Negro League's great baseball player Satchel Paige. TO SATCH. It is printed below. Allen was a lawyer, academic and poet whose pen name was PAUL VESEY. Born on December 9, 1917 in Columbus, Ohio, he was the son of a pastor and grew up “in the heart of the black community [never] insulated from its problems or deprived of its energies or resources.” He graduated from Fisk (a college I have a deep connection to, and love for) and Harvard Law. At Fisk he studied writing with Harlem Renaissance great James Weldon Johnson. After service in the segregated Army in WWII, he lived in Paris where he met many of the expatriot community, including Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Richard Wright, who was the first to publish Allen's work. Allen translated work of French writers, including Jean-Paul Sartre. Allen died June 27, 2015 in Boston at the age of 97. Poet laureate Dolores Kendrick wrote, “Sam Allen broke the bar. He traveled in his poetic genius not under the bar or over it, but beyond it. In his passing the world lost a sweet hallelujah for great poetry and the genius of a quiet man who gave to all things great and small.” Print of image available on www.peterjketchum.com
Sometimes I feel like I will never stop
Just go on forever
Till one fine mornin
I'm gonna reach up and grab me a handfulla stars
Swing out my long lean leg
And whip three hot strikes burnin down the heavens
And look over at God and say
How about that!!!! By PAUL VESEY (Samuel Allen)