Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
—Seneca
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Every beginning has an end. Every end is a new beginning.
Those are the thoughts that come to mind for me when I look at this new painting that I am calling Omega Tree which is part of my show, Sensing the Unseen that opens on December 1 at the Kada Gallery.
It’s a paradoxical feeling, one that is saddened by the ending of one thing yet also gladdened by the start of another. And I see that here as my eye moves upward from the bottom. There are bare purplish mounds that would normally support other trees in much of my work, something that hints of something missing. Something has happened that has taken away those other trees.
Going up through the picture, the ground is covered with snow. Wintry and cool, the end of the growing year and the precursor to the coming spring. And atop the highest mound stands a single tree that has persevered. It is an evergreen whose end has not yet come and it is a beginning to something new in this place.
And at the top is the moon/sun that seems to us endless. Yet we know that it also has an ending at some point well beyond our own. For now, it witnesses our new beginning in this place.
It’s an odd little piece, this 16″ by 8″ canvas. It feels like a warning of some kind of environmental catastrophe while simultaneously reminding us that we have a place in the cycle and rhythm of the universe. A cool foreboding of an end along with a warm greeting to a new beginning.
Redtree Times 