I have been working to finish this last painting and had
promised that I would post the paintings once they were all framed. These past
weeks have been intense on so many different levels. We have all had to either
endure or embrace this long winter and it seems fitting, this struggle; for
everywhere I turn I see people trying to make sense of their place within this
rapidly changing world.
Comfort. Compassion. The reaching out for solace within this
chaotic rush that defines going forward. How do we step out of, as a friend put
it “our own movie”, to penetrate and touch someone living in their own swept up
chaotic swirl?
As I worked on this last painting all these thoughts were
swirling around in my head. I look around and I see the desperate need to
connect, to find purchase in a world so caught up in moving without recognizing
the purpose of the movement. But how do we step outside of this, if only for moments,
so that we can see and learn; understand our place among such disjointed chaos?
We can look at our personal history; try to understand those
who came before us. Look towards both the grace that lies within us and the
darkness that struggles within that is this dualistic contrast of light and
dark that makes up the totality of our being. Find compassion in giving and in the act of receiving. To
embrace both the intellectual side of understanding as well as the emotional
and spiritual side finding strength and ideas within both.
To bring a sense of the eternal into the now: this time,
this place, and this space, finally gaining a deeper perspective. To find the
realm of faith, not religion strictly speaking, but faith in all things, that
connected consciousness that weaves through all things: The inter-connectedness,
the energy that pulses and informs.
This course, stretching from time immortal carrying the
heart’s desire symbolic of the creative impulse that drives us to yearn for
discovery, for truth; that truth that lies within as a sacred trust awaiting
discovery. Within this gesture of comfort, compassion exudes and touches this
carried heart’s desire. Thus freeing, even in such abject pain, the soul’s
spirit to embrace this calling true.
Grace offers enlightened energy from God’s light, and desire
offers the trickle, the drop of life’s blood, gained in the darkest of night.
Together is the spark, the symbolic essence of our whole self. The recognition
that comes from comingling of the dark side of the self with the light of the
spirit within. Both are needed; this is the dualistic nature of truth, of
understanding, one we must embrace.
Within the painting all these elements come into play.
“Traces of Gifts Given”
The act of compassion
Exposed,
As curtains unveiled
Pulled
upon by weighted hands
Revealing truth magnified.
Golden grace in offering hands
Pours
from deep within
Balanced on other shores
By
ancestors touch,
Unbroken and sure.
These traces of gifts, given
Unfettered,
pure
Forming out of touch, loving
Forever
permeating our hearts,
Our souls.
Given, yet not to be received
Unsure,
without trust to be lost,
Yet to be discovered.
It is in this sacred trust
Reaching,
out blindly,
Contact pure, that desire, now set aside
Finds
grace within.
And in this, our own hard won truth.
February 23, 2014
“Traces of Gifts Given”
55”x87” oil on canvas 2014
“In Silent Touch My Purchase Gained” 93”X69 3/8” oil on canvas 2013/14
“The Dreamer’s Requiem” 81 1/4”x61 5/8” oil on canvas 2014
“The Reunion of Memory” 81 1/4”x61 5/8” oil on canvas 2014
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