The Painter and the Poets

ByMark Vallen
Cover art for RATTLE by Mark Vallen
Cover art for the Spring 2007 edition of RATTLE. The Red Dress. Mark Vallen 2006. Oil on masonite panel.

RATTLE is an important national literary publication that offers contemporary poetry, translations, reviews, essays and interviews. I’m pleased to announce that my painting, The Red Dress, appears as the cover for the journal’s Spring 2007 issue.

RATTLE publishes print issues twice a year, but also releases web based versions as PDF downloads during the months of March and September. The web based versions of the journal offer content not available in the printed volumes, and in the case of the Spring 07 PDF edition – you’ll find reproductions of five oil paintings by yours truly.

Amongst other delights, the sixty pages of the Spring PDF edition contains an essay by Gary Lehmann, six poem-excerpts from Laurie Blauner’s All This Could Be Yours and Roy Jacobstein’s prize-winning collection, A Form of Optimism.

A free, low-resolution download of the Spring PDF edition is available for viewing, but if you purchase the high-resolution PDF version for only $5.00 – you’ll be able to print out the entire edition – which includes four full color paintings from my studio, Japanese Dancer, Solidarity, African American, and War Child.

Cover art for the Santa Monica Review by Mark Vallen
Cover art for the Spring 2007 edition of the Santa Monica Review. Insha’Allah – God Willing. Mark Vallen. Oil on masonite panel.

An additional painting from my studio also appears as the front cover for the Spring 2007 edition of the literary arts journal, Santa Monica Review. Publishing for nearly twenty years, the Review offers fine literary fiction and non-fiction, and features both first-time writers and established authors, with a focus on writers of Southern California and the Pacific Rim.

My cover artwork for the Review is a new painting titled, Insha’Allah, which is the Arabic expression for “God Willing.” Consider the surreal image a prayer for peace that marks the forth anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

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