Colby A. Sanford is a figurative realist painter with a heart for finding poetry in the prosaic. Growing up in an unconventional home, he was encouraged to paint on the walls of his bedroom and later lived in a yurt. His most precious moments are spent at home with his wife and two daughters, often baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Working in a restricted acrylic paint palette, Sanford is able to highlight beauty in the mundane. Many works are paired with short-form poetry that serves to further parse extraordinaries from the commonplace of everyday life.
“Last year I started following an impulse to jot down words and phrases that come to mind as I paint. I then compose them into short-form poems. This allows me to develop an idea within a painting without overworking the scene. The resulting combination of word and image welcomes a new dimension to the artworks, an added richness to explore and connect to.”
See now
How this branch twists and turns
And never seems to end?
I used to think that we were climbing up,
but when our branches converged I realized
that we are climbing down.
That the farther we go together,
the deeper and stronger the branches,
the sweeter the smell of dirt
Far from the effervescent
ever-changing leaves
And softening fruit.
Closer to richness
To nourishment,
To source.
The way you sway
Subconsciously
And the pop of a dandelion and
the buzz of the air
And the crisp blue sky
reflected in your eyes
And the strands of hair that fly
Far from the rest to catch
the summer sun
And the melody that you sing
By living each day
And other things
that rhyme with
Harmony
O, Circadian child,
Keeper of our time,
Your mother & I
Know the sunrise by your foot fall
Ringing towards us
across the house
Your warmth
Your energy
Is our high noon sun
At times
It stretches long
And at times
We can not believe how quickly it passes
’Til your eyes close
beneath the moon
And we sleep another night
Most of the time
I can see no stairway to the sky
So what does this
Sometimes deepness,
Sometimes emptiness,
Sometimes desperation,
Sometimes ambivalence,
Sometimes peace,
Sometimes insanity
Within me
Expect of me?
Can I conduct some kind of skyward pilgrimage
From the mere confines of my heart?
I read somewhere
that a lake holds about 62,520 cubic
feet of water. With a little math, I figure that
if I were to move 100 cubic feet a day, I could
dig us a lake in about one and three quarter
years. And I would, you know, just
so we could continue to float together
through this life, on our lake’s rich, bright
surface.
At first it is nothing,
And as with most things,
it is just dark.
Then you point
to a small prick in the west
And tell me it is some planet
As it sparks to life.
And then the shape
of a lion, but
I can’t remember
where.
And then you point out
a Greek hunter whose hip
points to the
north.
Then there is a crab
and a bear and
one animal after another
with various spoons
and a scale and
other shapes mixed in.
And it does not stop,
only getting brighter with
each new star.
Until it is nothing
but one smooth,
bright-white
Night sky.
To this day I can’t remember
if it was actually the night sky
or just the way light began to pour itself
into me upon meeting you
Even though you have my lips,
I pray that you have her taste,
her breath for life,
her words.
You have her eyes
You have her hair
You have her stretching fingers
You are both pure light
When I saw that picture of her
at three and a half on halloween,
I could only see YOU with that
pointed black hat.
I can only hope
that you have her soul,
have her kindness,
that you have her heart.