எம்.டி.முத்துக்குமாரசாமி: Introduction to "Bones of Last Supper" - Paintings of C.Douglas and Poems of M.D.Muthukumaraswamy

Where Brushstrokes Whisper and Words Resound

M.D.Muthukumaraswamy

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I The Genius of Douglas

When I first encountered the paintings of C. Douglas, I was struck by their haunting depth—a quality that seemed to resonate far beyond the canvas, reaching into spaces of memory, emotion, and silence. His mastery lies not only in the physical texture of his work but in its ability to evoke textures of thought and feeling. Every stroke, every shade, carries a profound sense of humanity’s fragility and resilience. It was this quality that inspired me to create "Bones of Last Supper" as a tribute to his genius, an offering that seeks to extend and echo the worlds he paints.

Douglas’s work has a way of revealing the invisible—what lies beneath the surface of perception and what remains after the visible fades. His paintings do not just depict; they question, they suggest, they linger. I wanted my poems to do the same. Each poem in this collection is a response to his art, a reflection born from standing before his canvases and letting their power wash over me. At times, the poems attempt to amplify the visual themes he explores. At other moments, they challenge or reinterpret them, creating a conversation where the boundaries of medium dissolve.

This collection is, above all, my way of engaging with the artistry of a painter whose work has deeply moved me. I hope the interplay between my words and his images offers readers a fuller appreciation of his genius. My intention is not to explain his paintings but to walk alongside them, to honour the mysteries they hold and to invite readers into that shared space of discovery and wonder. For me, this book is a dialogue, a tribute to the enduring power of visual art to shape and inspire the written word.

II Organisation of “Bones of Last Supper”

Before you step into the intricate world of "Bones of Last Supper", let me guide you through how this collection unfolds. The book takes you on a journey across four thematic sections—The Geometry of Emotion, Textures of Time, Shadows and Silhouettes, and Echoes of the Unseen. Each section reflects a conscious dialogue between my poetry and C. Douglas's paintings, not as static counterparts but as dynamic interactions that evolve with each reading.

The title, "Bones of Last Supper", is a metaphor I chose with care. To me, it encapsulates both fragility and permanence, hinting at themes of communion, sacrifice, and the traces we leave behind. It’s an invitation to think about what remains when all else is stripped away—and how art can make that residue resonate.

In 'The Geometry of Emotion', I begin by mapping out the raw, almost architectural nature of feelings. Poems like “Requiem for a Paper Toy” and “Between Skin and Sky” emerged from my engagement with Douglas's fragmented forms and stark contrasts, compelling me to explore vulnerability and resilience in equal measure.

'Textures of Time' is where my thoughts turn to memory and impermanence. I found myself drawn to the fading colours and fractured clocks in Douglas’s work, and these motifs seep into poems like “Time Crumples Like Coarse Paper,” where words mirror the visual erosion.

By the time we reach 'Shadows and Silhouettes' and 'Echoes of the Unseen', the focus shifts toward absence and the metaphysical. These final sections invite reflection on what lies beyond the tangible—the spaces where presence and impermanence coexist. Together, the sections form an interwoven textures that, I hope, will immerse you in the shared language of word and image.

III The Dialogic Relationship Between Poems and Paintings

In "Bones of Last Supper", we embark on a profound artistic exploration where my poetry and C. Douglas's paintings converse across mediums, creating a textured landscape of emotion, form, and thought. These works are not mere illustrations or captions to one another but intricate dialogues—mutually interrogating, enhancing, and sometimes contradicting each other. This interplay forms the heart of the book, an experiment in layered meaning where every line and brushstroke resonates with echoes of the other.

From the outset, the structure of the book suggests a deliberate journey, divided into thematic sections that reveal shifting moods and inquiries. Each section—'The Geometry of Emotion', 'Textures of Time', 'Shadows and Silhouettes', and 'Echoes of the Unseen'—presents a unique realm where the visual and verbal entwine, evoking a seamless flow of interpretation. The title, "Bones of Last Supper", itself evokes stark imagery, hinting at the fragile remnants of sustenance, communion, and sacrifice. It sets the tone for a work that contemplates human existence through its barest and most enduring elements.

Douglas's paintings serve as both the muse and the foil for my poems. In their abstract and emotive quality, his visual works provide a stage for poetic meditation. Consider, for instance, the painting that inspired “Requiem for a Paper Toy,” where swirling oceanic blues and jagged shoreline browns evoke a sense of both turbulence and decay. The accompanying poem, in its opening lines—

The ocean gnaws the shoreline’s bleached bones,

Its hungry tongue lapping at my feet.

—translates this visual chaos into an existential reckoning. The metaphoric “paper toy,” fragile and disposable, becomes a vessel for contemplating impermanence.

Similarly, in “Smear of Purple Light,” a painting of indistinct shadows and a horizon smudged with violet hues inspires lines that oscillate between the concrete and the ineffable:

In the veins of time, 

I hear a distant heartbeat, 

faint, like an afterthought, 

weightless sorrow blooming in the quiet dark.

Here, the visual and the verbal both suggest an otherworldly melancholia, where absence and presence exist in an uneasy balance.

IV Thematic Sections as Frames

The organisation of the poems into thematic sections mirrors the layered, fragmented nature of Douglas’s paintings. Each section acts as a gallery of interconnected ideas, yet the transition between them is fluid rather than rigid.

i. The Geometry of Emotion

This section lays bare the contours of human feeling. Poems like “Between Skin and Sky” and “Cardboard and Flesh” explore the boundary between self and world, flesh and abstraction. Douglas’s skeletal trees and fragmented human forms amplify this exploration. In “Between Skin and Sky,” I wrote:

I stand beneath a skeletal tree, its branches twisted, laden not with fruit, but chickens. Their small bodies, feathered with shame and despair, crowd the limbs as if invited to a macabre feast.

The grotesque imagery mirrors Douglas’s uncanny ability to render the mundane surreal, forcing us to confront the frailty of human and animal existence alike.

Ii. Textures of Time

Here, time is both subject and medium. Paintings depicting fractured clocks, faded landscapes, and eroded textures inspire meditations on memory and decay. In “Time Crumples Like Coarse Paper,” the poem draws directly from the peeling layers of one painting:

In this fluid reality, where time bends and folds like coarse paper, where emotion is a tense yellow spot on the canvas of the mind…

The words attempt to echo the visual distortion of Douglas’s textures, suggesting a world unraveling under the weight of its own temporality.

iii.Shadows and Silhouettes

This section delves into absence and erasure. Douglas’s faceless figures, often rendered in muted tones, invite poems like “Faceless and Fragile,” which reflects on what remains when the visible dissolves:

The wood knows something— bare and splintered, where the memory of faces once was, it holds what it can no longer show.

These poems do not merely describe the paintings but engage in an act of co-creation, offering alternate narratives or emotional counterpoints.

iv.Echoes of the Unseen

The final section reaches toward the metaphysical. Paintings that depict spectral forms or liminal spaces—wetlands at dawn, half-seen birds—prompt meditations on the ephemeral. “Liminal Wetland Feeding” captures this interplay:

She is a demoiselle crane, someone breathtaking in her vulnerability. A liminal time, a time between things, chastely erotic bird banding, wetland feeding.

Here, the fragile elegance of the crane echoes the painter’s brushstrokes, both seeking to arrest the transient.

v.The Act of Framing

A central theme in Bones of Last Supper is the violence and tenderness inherent in framing—in choosing what to reveal and what to obscure. Both poetry and painting are acts of framing, and this book foregrounds that shared process. In “A Dark Field, Almost Near-Black,” I muse on the tension of this act:

What is this faith that moves me? 

It must be something like this— 

not belief, but the act of staying in the dark field, 

driven by a force I never asked for, 

but have always been a part of.

Douglas’s paintings, too, seem to ask: What does it mean to frame a moment, a feeling, a life? The answers are never definitive but emerge in the spaces between brushstroke and stanza.

Bones of Last Supper is not a book to be consumed passively. It demands that we linger, return, and allow the interplay between word and image to unfold gradually. It is an invitation to see with new eyes—to read paintings and to visualise poetry—in a way that dissolves traditional boundaries.

Together, Douglas and I have sought to create something greater than the sum of its parts, a conversation where each medium listens and responds to the other, amplifying the silence that resides at the core of all creation.

In this collaboration, I find a profound gratitude—for the restless inquiries of art, for the tensions that refuse resolution, and for the enduring power of dialogue between image and word. It is my hope that readers, too, will find themselves transformed within these pages, as participants in this ongoing act of creation.

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