Solitude is the place of purification.
–Martin Buber
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I call this new painting, a fairly large 20″ by 60″ canvas, Purifying Light. There’s something about the light from the sun here that speaks to me of the burning away of impurities, of purging the darkness with light. Light is the revelator of truth and truth is the revelator of flaws and impurities.
That sounds a bit too dramatic, a bit too preachy for what I am trying to get across here. But it’s always hard to get across vague but large concepts. I think we all possess flaws and impurities that we live with by hiding them in the shadows around us– with half-truths told, hidden histories and diversions that take the light from these flaws. But at some point, these imperfections always come to light in some form, revealing our true selves, our true natures.
At first blush that sounds awful. But ultimately that is when and where we find the peace and acceptance of the truth of our reality– what we are and what we are not. The light of this truth burns away the weight of those imperfections, like the rust and barnacles being stripped away from the hull of a steel ship. As the ship glides easier through the water freed from these things that once clung to it so do we move forward, freed from the burdens of our faults.
Okay, there’s a bit of hyperbole here. But there is something in this piece, perhaps because of it’s large size and strong colors, that inspires a little heightened rhetoric. It is calm and introspective but with an exclamation point. And I kind of like that…
Redtree Times 