Welcome to the Marcel van Rootselaar Art & Sound Works site.
You’re looking, so to speak, through the front window of my online gallery. Inside you will find a variety of poetry, photography, music; some paintings, sound sculptures and sound poems, writings… mostly centered around the same interconnected themes: wonderment, beauty, the unfamiliar, doorways… what lies beyond, what lies within…
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For most recent postings go to Blog, or go straight to one of the Galleries.
A new art installation titled Room for Reflection is scheduled for the 2019 season. For more information please visit our Manifold Artworks LLC site.
copper on fire (c) 2016 (part of forthcoming Room for Reflection installation)
Taken away
As my friends are dying
left and
right they are
to question me
Are you?
are you really?
allowing yourself to have
your heart cracked
just because that
water lily opened itself
unknowing to itself
in infinite perfection
petal by petal
to accept the rays
of an even greater
mystery
Are you really?
allowing yourself to
open doors so clearly
marked by fear No
Entrance as to say
yes you could have been
infinite
on an infinite path
but why risk the
comfort of what’s known and
within
reach a little further
my friend
taste the bitter
pleasures of unknown
unknowns that shrug at the
speed of light
Are you?
confident
this
is what it
is
you are
you and me
and every other thing you
eat and breathe and
See
what the problem is?
You are living
in darkness
a certain darkness of sorts.
A darkness that can
only
give itself up to an astonishing
blinding light
the light breaking us
again and again
in waves of love
until we are ready to
float and
Be
taken away
New York
9.4.2018
© 2018 Marcel van Rootselaar
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Sacred Sound Spaces
The first in a series of soprano saxophone improvisations I recently started recording in the Netherlands, Italy and the US, this track was recorded at the beautiful old (1206 AD) Berg Kerk in Deventer (the Netherlands) in May 2014.
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Impromptu sound poem ( solo piano)
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Untitled 2002 Mixed oil and acrylic on plywood
Seize
Seize
When unexpectedly
a window opens ever so slightly
so
I can
embrace the bars
real
or figments of my
imagination
fixed
and forever mutable
surrounding my soul,
my spirit lunges
forward
to see, to seize the freedom
that was always mine
and yours,
a freedom boundless
and infinite
in its joy and wisdom,
a freedom worthy of a
love supreme.
New York
July 31, 2015
Sway
The fluid sway
of her hips,
like a cool
summer breeze
shutters moving
back and forth
a hot
summer afternoon,
my eyes drawn ’round
the corner
where she
undoubtedly
swayed her hips
cool
like a summer breeze
shutters moving back
and forth
a hot summer
afternoon.
NY 5.31.2012
Untitled
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Approaching the familiar through the unfamiliar
March 15, 2013
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It always stuck with me how a saxophone player described gaining a whole new perspective on saxophone playing by doing an in-depth study of trumpet players.
By stepping into the unfamiliar, and necessarily translating back into the ‘familiar’, we are required to invent a new language of our own – new words, new colors, new imagery, new tools.
Nothing more instructive than dwelling in a foreign country for a while.
Or camping out in the wilderness.
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Go to latest posts in
Blog
Untitled 2002 Mixed oil and acrylic on plywood