As I scanned through images for this week’s letter, this painting study I created last year at about this time spoke to me. I was drawn to the muted, quiet colors and shapes. An internal landscape of steadiness. It is a small study, but one that feels deserving of further exploration and expansion. It speaks of cultivating inner quiet. Maybe it is a return to the Pacific Northwest and its diffuse light that has pulled me inward again. A desire to grow inner peace as the world continues to become over-heated and embroiled in conflict.
This painting felt like a letter I had written to myself and forgotten. Initially I was looking at the painting straight on, with the forest green rectangle providing weight and solidity beneath the stacked vertical forms. From that vantage point, the visual architecture reflected stability and structure. Yet as I continued to contemplate these forms, I began to see the picture from an aerial perspective. From that viewpoint, the forms that seemed to provide stability instead turned into a jumping off point. Structure, yes, but the stacked horizontal lines now suddenly lead to a drop into nothingness. All of the knowledge that came before began slipping away into an unknown space of emptiness and potential.
This feels accurate to the process of change and growth. However desperately I want the stair-step process to guide me clearly into the next chapter, at the critical point, jumping off into the void is the only option. Staying behind in the place of the familiar and the stable only serves to keep me contained and ultimately stagnant. When I find myself resisting change and wanting to know the path before I jump, I get frustrated, anxious, upset and over-reactive. This painting reminds me that these emotions are arising not because something is wrong, but that the time has come for the next jump into the unknown.
Until next Friday!
Be well, breathe, read, and make some art!
Jen