IN THE BEGINNING
I am writing this a few days after the new moon. The painting below, my “Inner Constellation 7:30 AM” is how I have been seeing/feeling new moon vibes lately. It feels like a fresh start. It makes me feel like I am tending my little garden of hope.
When I was studying Architecture, I read a book that changed my life. It’s called “Between Silence and Light”, a book by John Lobell which is a compilation of the words of Architect Louis Khan. It taught me about many things: about light, shadow, desire, beauty. It taught me about the poetry of observation. It taught me how to find the essence of things in their beginning.
Even now, over 30 years since I have read it, I think about that book often and I apply what I have learned from it into my work as an artist and into the continuing poetry of life. I explore the beginning of things. The etymology of a word, the origin of a thought, the ancient history of a place or an object and sure enough, I come closer to an understanding of what that thing is. From this love of beginnings, I built a whole exhibit based on creation myths from different parts of the world. This is how I continue to try to understand the human being.
From these creation myths, I found a thread, one that connects me to the Source. Not just the Source of my existence as a human being, but the Source of my existence as an artist. There is something mysterious about making a thing, creating a painting or creating anything. When I follow that thread of connection, creating (and all creation) makes sense. Not in ways I could articulate with words, but in a feeling. That feeling doesn’t answer the question— I am glad it answers nothing or else this magnificent search ends. The feeling is just a joyful certainty that there is something in me that is plugged in to the Source of everything. There is an eternal well from which I draw the sacred water for my unquenchable thirst.
I don’t know when exactly I started noticing the patterns, the rhythms, the cycles of things that stem from that Source. But I know there is a grand order in all of creation and I am part of that order. I feed on that harmony whether I am conscious of it or not. I started noticing the phases of the moon, the seasons and equinoxes, the phases of my own body—also a kind of planet on a planet with its ecosystem and its order. I began to notice festivals and ceremonies and I felt that I understood. I understood, not with my brain but with my cells and my liver and my spleen and my heart and my bones and my soul. It makes me happy to have an understanding that longs for more understanding. I keep painting to keep trying to understand, deeper and deeper.
I feel a greater connection with all things. It’s like we are immersed in a soup of beautiful forces that begin and end and begin again. So here we are, just a little bit after a new beginning— the new moon in Pisces. I do feel like a fish swimming in darkness today but there is a light somewhere. I am following that light that is the thread of creation and I know that this is not a line but a circle. I may be swimming in the dark but I know I am going back to the Source.
Inner Constellation 7:30AM 2021 Acrylic on Canvas 84”X60”