The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.
― Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark
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This is a new painting that is part of my upcoming June show, Truth and Belief, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria. This is a 36″ by 24″ canvas that I am calling The Invocation.
Part of me feels as though this is a painting where I should write more about it. But another part of me feels that this is a piece that deserves the quiet that allows others to see what they will in it. It has the feel of a piece that could hold many meanings for different people.
I will try to keep my own views brief with the hope that they won’t taint the perspective of others.
This painting has, for me, a definite feeling of long held desires and the sending out of wishes and prayers for their fulfillment. Maybe it’s the angel-like shape created by the negative space of the river and sky, much like the piece that I wrote about last month, Flight of Angels. The bridge here serves as a golden belt for the angel and the light around the shape of the moon creates a halo-like effect. The Red Tree seems to be poised on the shoulder of this angel, whispering its deepest desires in its ear.
This wasn’t painted with this symbolism in mind. I knew I wanted a river with a bridge in this piece and the bridge was the first thing painted. But it wasn’t placed with the idea that it would represent a belt for an angel. It was located at a point where I thought it felt right and would simply set the composition into motion. From there, the painting kind of grew organically. The final composition set tone for the blue and purple color palette.
I’m really enjoying this painting in the studio and am finding new things each day that I didn’t see while painting it. That gives me real satisfaction. Whether that means anything beyond the walls of my studio, well, that’s another thing.
Sometimes the horizon is defined by a wall behind which rises the noise of a disappearing train. The whole nostalgia of the infinite is revealed to us behind the geometrical precision of the square. We experience the most unforgettable movements when certain aspects of the world, whose existence we completely ignore, suddenly confront us with the revelation of mysteries lying all the time within our reach and which we cannot see because we are too short-sighted, and cannot feel because our senses are inadequately developed. Their dead voices speak to us from nearby, but they sound like voices from another planet.
A child in India grows up with the idea that you have to make choices that will create a better future. In fact, your whole life is a continuum of choices, so the more conscious you are, the greater your life will be.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. 
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away.
Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate. 
“Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude!- ‘Have courage to use your own reason!’- that is the motto of enlightenment.”
Redtree Times 