“Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being.; to return to Eden, make friends with the snake and set up our computers among the wild apple trees.

Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy. Or, barring that, to turn out a good, juicy cheeseburger and a strong glass of beer.” ~~ Tom Robbins, writer.  (from Life Magazine, December 1988. “The Meaning of Life”)

I never developed a taste for beer (try as I might as a college student so many years ago) and cheeseburgers don’t sound so good to me any more as I’ve learned to cater to my finicky digestive system.  But I’m having closer encounters with that “primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy” through my chosen vehicle of artistic expression – painting on canvas with acrylic paints.  I’m painting portraits – of people, pets, water birds, trees, flowers, shapes, colors and forms.  Every brush stroke takes me closer to truth. Not the truth that people argue about, but the truth expressed simply and ever so elegantly in nature.

Through painting, I’m learning to look at everything with less judgment and with deeper curiosity.  I am no longer content to look at something and define it with a permanent, static definition.  For example, green is far more than a single crayon in the box.  I’m learning this from painting “en plein air”  where the light dances on the subject and changes the color of what I’m observing from one moment to the next.  Where once there were solid green leaves, now there are blue and violet shadows and yellow and orange highlights and diamond dust dancing on the leaves from drops of dew in the morning light. There are golds and browns and iridescent rainbows from where the snail left its trail and the caterpillar chewed a ruffled edge and an unknown assailant changed the form and color of the individual leaf and distinguished it from its neighbors.  And my heart skips a beat as I become aware that I am witness to the secrets of life itself, while knowing that the only constant to what I am witnessing is everlasting change.

“Blue Bamboo”  Acrylic on 20″ x 16″ Canvas

I become aware that there is no camera, no paint brush, no palette that can capture the true magic of the mystery before me, but I can let the paint flow onto the canvas and the energy of my emotion, evoked by the scene unfolding before me, will transport the viewer into a similar state of ecstasy – if she will only stay long enough to look deeply into the painting, beyond the shapes and forms and colors, into the pure creative energy that reflects some rays of the spectrum to our eyes and absorbs others. This is the same energy that connects the atoms that make up the molecules that make up the essence of everything we are and everything we see and that what we are and what we see are connected through what we don’t see:  Pure Creative Energy.

Cheers!

“Astral Spin”   Acrylic on 18″ x 24″ Canvas