Translucent Minimalism

Years of solitude had taught him that, in one’s memory, all days tend to be the same, but that there is not a day, not even in jail or in the hospital, which does not bring surprises, which is not a translucent network of minimal surprises.

–Jorge Luis Borges*

This insight from my favorite art blog, slowmuse and my painterly response today, below.  Still noodling out the idea.

work in process, 36x36, oil on canvas

Nature's Restorative Power

  Beckoning, 12x12 oil on gessobord

Nature inspires and heals.  It gives us a reason to take a deep breath and look outside our banal existence for meaning.  It serves to keep us continually amazed and awed at its vastness and at the same time, focuses our attention on the relevance of the minute.

When I've been away too long, my spirit suffers.  And it takes so little to restore my connection that I'm always surprised at any reluctance to enter into its peaceful setting and just breathe in the sensory pleasures--the sounds and smells and wonders.  I think we could all better face the challenges of our existence with a bit more alignment with nature's energies.

This is a small painting, 12x12, with little detail, but loads of atmosphere.  It's elusiveness is purposeful to beckon us to take a moment and look closer.  As Rilke says in his Letters to a Young Poet, things may not be reconciled in your conscious mind, but they will be revealed in your innermost awareness.

Breath

The Far Places Within Me, 30 x 30 in, oil on canvas

In preparing for our move, I had a yard sale this past weekend.  I sold a lot of books--because they had become burdensome and heavy to me in my mind.  Not my art books, however.  They are stored and ready for shelfing wherever we land.  As I spent the weekend manning the sale, I experienced a retrospective of all my interests and yearnings from years ago.  All the stages of my reading were there displaying the development of my thinking, my passions, and my desires.  The travel books for trips not yet taken (Prague), the obsession with the writer's life which came before my visual art (that creative solitude thing that is central to who I am), the parenting books that were so important before I realized it was my children who were teaching me.  I let these symbols of my past interests go onto someone else's bookshelf to be pondered and processed and incorporated into their knowledge and sensitivities.

So for today, it is these words from Rilke that inspire me to continue to feel within the every breath all that has transpired before and all that will come in the future, but most of all--to recognize what is here right now.  Breathe in, breathe out.

Breath, you invisible poem!
Pure, continuous exchange
with all that is, flow and counterflow
where rhythmically I come to be.

Each time a wave that occurs just once
in a sea I discover I am.
You, innermost of oceans,
you, infinitude of space

How many far places were once
within me. Some winds
are like my own child.

When I breathe them now, do they know me again?
Air, you silken surround,
completion and seed of my words

Sonnets to Orpheus
Rainer Maria Rilke