Antonio Domingos

The Divine Proportion

The Divine Proportion

Rectangles all around me. The paper I write upon or the monitor’s light-rectangle. The ruler. The surface of the table, the covers of the books. Windows. Curtains are rippled rectangles that surrendered to the golden sun and faded away. The closets. The drawers in the closets. The handles of the drawers in the closets. Inside the drawers, the white and coloured sheets, thick, rough, or almost transparent. On the rectangles of the floor, clouds of accumulated paint sprinkled by liquid miniature explosions. Each one contains unending galaxies scratched by my footsteps in whirls of fallen stars.

Outside, rectangles are stones, bricks, tiles. Wood, half-devoured by the cold grey of the mist, where stories of smoke and dust were written by the wind. Shiny plates became rusty rectangles flowing upon crumbling cement. Ridges of light draw on the walls horizons of silence where the vision is lost in nebulae of granite. Masonry rectangles lay upon ground lines of concrete.

In front of me, the blank canvas. Rectangle of woven gold where the primal whiteness lies, waiting for the slow transmutation, the magic alchemy of the colours. Perfect balance. The oneness gave birth to the dimension which cannot be expressed but can be clasped entirely in my embrace. The hand multiplies caresses of blue and grey, lays out in the shadow fleeting meteors, scratches on the fabric indelible scars. Spreads planets. Pours in the void the diffuse light of hazy dawns. The simmetric repetition of the gesture produces textures diluted in the harmony of the rectangles generated by the ancient formula. Silent and still. Doorways to an universe with no name. Without beginning or end. Eternal.

António Domingos, September/2005