… I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
-T.S. Eliot, East Coker, The Four Quartets
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I’ve been in a deep groove lately as I ready work for my upcoming June show, Part of the Pattern, at the Principle Gallery. Part of finding this groove was returning in the last month or so to process of transparent inkiness that marked the early incarnations of my work. An example of this is the piece shown above, a 6″ by 24″ painting on paper that I am calling In the Waiting, taken from the Eliot lines above.
The strength of this wet work, at least for me, is in the way the fluidity of the paint creates the tension and contrast that carries the emotional content of the painting. The duskiness where light and dark comes together is filled with the anticipation of all that is to come, all unknown to the waiting Red Tree who attempts to tamp down its desire to imagine what is coming.
The goal is to put aside any faith or hope or love –as Eliot puts it so beautifully– and simply await the inevitability of what is to come without thought. But that stillness of thought makes the waiting tolerable and allows us to view that which is before without the influence of our desire, to see things as they really are.
But as we all know, that is easier said than done…
Redtree Times 