From artist Deirdre Imus, Ode to A Nightingale. Mixed Media, 55 x 69 in | 139.7 x 175.3 cm
This painting was born on a trip to Dublin, Ireland. While Deirdre was sitting in a lobby bar enjoying a Guiness a man entered the room to announce a poetry reading to kick off happy hour. He read the poem Ode to A Nightingale by John Keats. The words stayed with her, particularly that opening image of a heart that aches with a drowsy numbness, the kind that lingers in love lost. She carried those words home and onto the canvas. When Keats wrote of a heart that aches and a drowsy numbness - of longing so acute it feels like poison - Deirdre Imus read those words and painted what they felt like. The verses are written directly onto the canvas, not as decoration, but as the emotional core of the piece. Created through her signature process of Stranding, Deirdre paints purely from feeling, letting each gesture reveal the next. Two abstracted figures lean into one another at the center, rendered in soft grays, surrounded by expressive bursts of navy, magenta, and teal. Looping black lines trail from the forms like sound fading into silence, while scattered ink drops punctuate the space with quiet intensity. Deirdre began painting daily in 2019 following the loss of her husband, working from a converted barn studio on her Texas ranch. Her connection to that land - its light, its animals, its open stillness - shapes every canvas she creates. Ode to a Nightingale carries that spirit: a painting made from the inside out, by someone who understands what it means when beauty and sorrow become difficult to tell apart. Her work has been exhibited across New York and Texas. It is currently represented by Schoonover Gallery in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, as well as Courtney Collins Fine Art Gallery in Big Springs, Montana. Ode to a Nightingale is part of Deirdre's 812-127 Series, which can be viewed on her website deirdreimus.com.
