Happy Valentine's Day!

A Haiku For My Sweetheart:

            George

crowding forever,  the sea

I had,    at last

two years   of his beauty.

Laura & George Florence, Italy. 2009

My Girlhood

Is rich with dreams and remembrances

Like the salty ridge road I ran on

And still I grow in the muddy red earth

Sunday afternoons are often filled with family

And long walks to those creeks

And the water, ponds, and cemetery

Still containing the corners of my youth

Those cliffs hold everything

That was given to me and taken

Where decision was conceived

Where my husband proposed

With trembling pride

And still I cannot see

No other way around it—

We made love on every grave

And every corner of the earth

I scribbled furiously from words of swords

That tore from the birds and the mouths

Of wild dogs, stray cats.

Longing for those creeks and corners

Those hours that spill from the ones before

Those legs of metaphor that hold the first

Quickening of my thighs

The same thoughts of uselessness and loneliness

The same obscene hope felt by the heat

Of the first spring day

I push my hair from the same wind that quivers

And refuses to know me

It is those same thoughts

That never melts away

The quickening still buds in the hair of flowers

And mystery is darker all around me now

It is pulling in the contrast of a tree limb

What I felt as a girl—

In the rows that land before I was born

In the corners that hatch

From his seed that I carried

I became a mystic in those fields.

In Our Time of Red Heat

The cherries blossom

Into the hand of forgiveness

We make love

And crawl under the floor

So complete in the star of ourselves.

I remember our time in Grahn

How we made love by the gas heater

Three times into the air each night

How we ached for the red warmth

To spread over our bodies

The blanket mapped out from afar

Carrying the summers of seafood casseroles

Crossing in the creeks of Karen’s hair

And walks to the waterfalls

It was a tremor held slightly

In the backs of our minds

Can I feel the red will become human?

The rose is a duet three times my experience.

God says there is a plan for everything we admire

But I always get lost in the tumble of weeds
Always the glow of the gas heater

How it separated us from the world

How his desperation

Held me like a veil.

Water will be close to me

And the cherries will give me all that I need.

The cleaves are branches in the wind

Of heroism, of splendor

Heat becomes always hotter than the air

I touch his face and brush his hair.

 poetry by Laura Eklund. Copyright, 2010

New Exhibitions:

One-Person show by Laura Eklund. Frary Gallery. Sarasota, FL. come to the artist's reception (I will be there!) http://www.frarygallery.com Opening on Thursday April 8, 2010

The 2010 Art Institute of Pittsburgh Faculty Show. Opening Reception March 12, 2010. (I will be there!)

"Little Treasures" International Curated Exhibition, Bologna, Italy. Galleria De' Marchi, June 2010.

New Paintings by Laura Eklund and Chris Mozier. Pyro Gallery, http://www.pyrogallery.com Louisville, Ky. September 2010.

"Red Is the Color of Blood." International Group Show. Emerging and Expert Gallery. Maharashtra, India. February 24th, 2010- March 13th 2010.

New Paintings by Laura Eklund. The Artist's Alley. San Fransisco, California.

February 15st -May 15st, 2010  http://www.theartistsalley.com

The Fiji Biennale, The Fiji Islands, June 2010.

Laura Eklund & Paul Lorenze : The Face of Abstraction. January 2011.

Pyro Gallery. Louisville, Ky.

Beck Center for the Arts Cleveland, Ohio.  32 paintings by Laura Eklund.

2009 Florence Biennial, Fortezza da Bazo, Florence, Italy, December 5-13, 2009.

The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Faculty Show: Juried. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. February-March 2009     opening artist's reception: February 13, 2009

Art Raw Gallery, International Emerging Artist's Show, NY, NY. Feb-March 2009.

 ***********************************************************