We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
-Joseph Campbell
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Imagine us all as being boats on the oceans of the world.
Some of us drift aimlessly, of course. That was how I first set out. No idea where I was going or even in which direction to navigate. At any given moment, what might be my destination could have been right in front of me or in a totally different hemisphere thousands of miles away and I would not know. I had no idea what to even look for as I drifted.
But some of us set out for a known destination and fully expect to arrive at that point. We have studied the maps and charts and set a course, making all the needed preparations and taking every precaution. We have sought out the advice of those who have made that voyage before and have formed an image in our mind of how the whole journey will go.
But sometimes things don’t go as we plan. Sometimes we get blown off course by storms and lose our way. Or we were not as prepared as we thought for the hardship of the voyage. Or the advice we received was mistaken. Or sometimes we arrive and find that there is no room for us to dock or that our destination just wasn’t as we had imagined before we set sail.
Perhaps ultimately that destination was not our destiny after all and we must set off once more in search of it. It must be out there, that place, that one spot that we feel is totally our own.
I suppose this is how I see this new painting, an 8″ by 20″ on paper that I simply call Destiny. It’s a composition that I have visited several times in the past and one that always attracts me for the simple elegance and balance of it. There’s a confidence and clean sharpness in the way the image comes across that makes it very palatable– it immediately announces itself to the viewer, regardless of how they personally interpret it.
This piece’s destiny is my June show, Observers, at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.
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I’ve been a fan of the late mythologist Joseph Campbell for many, many years. In his many books on myth, including his classic The Hero With a Thousand Faces, as well as a great PBS series, The Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers , Campbell documented myths from around the world but more importantly showed how intimately they related to our individual lives. Campbell showed us that we all had lives that very much followed the patterns that ran through the classic myths of all cultures.
Redtree Times 