About
DeeAnn Veeder is an artist living in Spencertown, New York. Her work is inspired by the tremendous mystery and beauty of nature, by the powerful wordlessness of profound emotions, and by the oil paints themselves; the sensuous, rich textures and vivid, vibrant colors that often conspire on a canvas in delightfully unpredictable ways.
About the series, A Largeness Coming On: This series began as a place to put my wordless, helpless, furious grief for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020, yet another black man murdered by white men. This grief and the paintings continued on through so many murders like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. It was also an accumulated grief that went back to Michael Brown and Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin and Philando Castille and Atatiana Jefferson and Kalief Browder and Tamir Rice and Elijah McClain – the list of lost lives is horrifyingly long and can be found at Say Their Names (see button below for a link). During this year, I also came upon the documentary A Most Beautiful Thing (see button below for a link) which lifted me and inspired the third painting in this series. And, then, in November of 2020 I read poet laureate Tracy K. Smith’s poem, We Feel Now A Largess Coming On, and I was stunned by it. Suddenly my work made sense to me; what I had been doing was putting tremendous psychic energy and love to this largeness coming on.
We Feel Now a Largeness Coming On by Tracy K. Smith (22nd U.S. Poet Laureate) Being called all manner of things from the Dictionary of Shame— not English, not words, not heard, but worn, borne, carried, never spent— we feel now a largeness coming on, something passing into us. We know not in what source it was begun, but rapt, we watch it rise through our fallen, our slain, our millions dragged, chained. Like daylight setting leaves alight— green to gold to blinding white. Like a spirit caught. Flame-in-flesh. I watched a woman try to shake it, once, from her shoulders and hips. A wild annihilating fright. Other women formed a wall around her, holding back what clamored to rise. God. Devil. Ancestor. What Black bodies carry through your schools, your cities. Do you see how mighty you’ve made us, all these generations running? Every day steeling ourselves against it. Every day coaxing it back into coils. And all the while feeding it. And all the while loving it.