Redtree Times

Jubilee- West End Gallery Show Ends Thursday, August 24

Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.

–Audre Lorde, Conversations with Audre Lorde

I often describe paintings such as the painting above, Jubilee, as my Baucis & Philemon pieces, work that is based on and inspired the Greek myth of the poor, elderly couple visited in their home by a disguised Zeus.

And these paintings are primarily just that. But I also see another reading in them. I often see them as representing the two sides of our individual wholeness. You might call it the individual’s yin and yang.

Two sides of the coin.

Dark and light. Good and bad. Male and female. Wise and foolish.

We are never one thing alone. We are comprised of opposing forces. Maybe it is the tension between these forces that creates whatever it is that animates us as living creatures.

I surely don’t know the answer to that. Beyond my paygrade, as they say.

But it has me thinking this morning. Maybe that is something we will talk about at the Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery later this morning.

Maybe. I won’t know until I start talking and something falls out to get the whole thing rolling. Where it goes is anyone’s guess.

Normally I would be urging folks to come out and join in the festivities but we have a very full house. Sorry for those of you who had wanted to come but weren’t able to reserve a spot.

I am hoping this won’t be the last so maybe next year?

PS: For those of you coming today, there is a clue in here somewhere to some part of the talk. It will alll soon be revealed…