When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be — I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry
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There’s something in the design of this new piece that is part of the Little Gems exhibit at the West End Gallery that reminded me of a flag or banner. I kept looking at it in the studio, wondering where or what it might represent as a flag, when it came to me: a place of peaceful stillness. Resting , as Wendell Berry points out in the quote above, in the grace of the world.
A state of serenity.
It’s a small painting, only 4″ by 6″ in size and titled Serenity Flag, but it speaks very strongly to me of the desire to quell the anxieties that often rise up within me and to find that moment of grace where they all dissolve into the stillness. I’ve spoken here often about this desire as being one of the prime motivators behind my painting and this simple, small piece sums it up well.
I think there’s the possibility that if I ever stumble into that state of placid stillness I will see the Serenity Flag flying.
Redtree Times 