Redtree Times

Flame of Life— At West End Gallery

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

This is Flame of Life, a 10″ by 10″ painting on canvas. It is included in my Persistent Rhythm show which is now hanging at the West End Gallery. The show ends August 29. There is also a Gallery Talk on Saturday, August 10, that begins at 11 AM.

I see the Red Tree in this painting as representing the Flame of Life, whatever force it is that energizes and animates us as humans. But I also like the idea of it representing those of us who have reinvented themselves at some point in their life, burning one’s prior self to ashes in order to build a new and better self.

I say better because hopefully at that point we would have experienced and transcended (survived) our own seven devils, as Nietzsche called them, those inner self-destructive aspects that bedevil many of us.

Maybe all of us. I can’t say for sure as many of these devils may be well hidden, only known to us alone. Maybe this act of keeping these devils under wraps is in itself something that should be set ablaze and reduced to ashes?

Again, I don’t know.

For myself, when it was time to set fire to my devils, I did try to burn that particular one as well. I wanted to be like the Red Tree here, aflame for all to see.

Nothing to hide.

But, of course, that might be a lie. To you and to myself.

Some devils from that prior incarnation might have escaped the fire and still lurk around me. You never know until they show their ugly faces.

But you can hope and try to live as though they have been turned to ash.

And let your flame burn bright…