A story is a model of reality. Something is always a metaphor.
The hopeless thing in my heart stops falling and finds a small place to stand.
Helen Garner
The sounds inside sending up the day like the stomp of steps; the laugh of puddles; the deep reach of thoughts, like raindrops soaking into garden soil.
With story as model for reality, I paint a picture of life here, with my words-
I paint with color. Bold sometimes, muted pastels and rainbow hues at others.
White cools, tempers, while also enlivens; enlisting these colors alongside to be bold in their presence.
Not always but sometimes these colors arrive as shapes, forms, recognizable ideas.
Rarely standing alone, they get a wash of white more often than not.
Flowers some see; petals, tears, drops of rain.
These play across the canvas of my mind until I can resist no more the zing to my fingertips, pulling them to life.
This is life; pulling visions into reality from behind my mind’s eye.
As small as a bed of flowers expertly planted to express a feeling I’ve invoked, to the largess of an artistic installation singing out across gallery walls, life tunes itself first inside the artists soul then expresses out, via the hand of this crafter.
Sometimes we can live portions of our lives never knowing why something must be born from us, born through us. All we can do is trust, birth, and keep on.
The power of the soul is like a great reservoir or like a force of water in a fast-rushing river. It is natural, not manipulated, and stems from an unknown source. Our role with this kind of power is to be an attentive observer noticing how the soul wants to thrust itself into life. It is also our task to find artful means of articulating and structuring that power, taking full responsibility for it, but trusting too that the soul has intentions and necessities that we may understand only partially.
Thomas Moore
I question continuously, teasing out a tiny sense of knowing before tripping back into uncertainty. It’s a rhythm I’ve accepted, if not begrudgingly-to know then never know-the sense of this call to create.
Age I am sure has been the friend at my side showing me how this is alright, okay, just fine; I am standing where so many before have, and many will after.
This is called living and it is nothing unique-
Yet it is entirely unique.
This is the gift unwrapped behind the tempering veil of white with which I paint; color blooms there, always.
I thought much differently toward the wizened furrow of my brow’s seeking out a purpose for this day.
The moral of this story?
It’s a fools errand to think one or even many clouded voices-inside, outside, or otherwise-could keep color from dancing into the world for life.