A story on ancestry…
I’ve taken up painting recently.
It’s something I’ve admired for a while, and I’ve had my stints here and there. But painting requires materials — bulky materials. Moving around as a nomad made that challenging.
My circumstances are different now, so I have gotten my materials and created my studio, and I paint.
Any medium of art is a way to transcribe the soul’s expression, unobstructed, if we let it be. Painting and drawing — visual art, really — I think provides that opportunity more than other forms, like writing. Why? Because structures are a kind of obstruction in the pathway of truthful expression, and words are structures. Words are also tools, a vehicle to send energy through. And when those tools are “mastered” then the creation of art becomes nuanced and complex; striking and specific, according to our intention.
But here, in this artistic exploration through paint, I desire to experience my intuition — what I know to be a fractal of God’s knowing through my own mind, my own innate knowing. I desire to articulate my voice through my artistry. Who am I without the overlaying of conditioning, philosophies, pedagogies, methods, and societal intentions? How do I feel, and how does that feeling reflect life back to me through the circumstances I choose to live within? It is the question of life, so I expect to receive my answer through living, but creating artwork helps me punctuate this grand soul story I’m telling through my human vessel.
There are many ways to allow intuition to arise, flow, and lead the creation of art. In this artwork I’ve created, “A story on ancestry…”, I experimented with a basic initial sketch of lines, inspired by foliage in the garden. I then allowed the mixing of colors and placing of paint along the canvas to be intuitive. And like intuition, like Godsense, it works with what it is given — what presently exists. Creating a coherent story through the artwork became more intuitive, more in-flow, as I continued painting. Much like life. Once in a while I’d try to use my left brain to think about what colors I should use or what should go where, or even what I was making in the long run, and my mind would go blank. I’d then cue my intuition and continue flowing with it like I’d never questioned anything at all.
As for the title of this work, “A story on ancestry…” — 16x20 in, acrylic on canvas — it came to me through the initial sketching of the structure, which can be seen in Phase 1 below.
I often stand in the garden to speak with my ancestors. They live everywhere, and especially within the foliage of Gaia’s Divine expressions. I thought about how branches and leaves always layer over one another, a multidimensional expression of the tree, the rooted form. And as they move through their lifecycles, they experience their own multidimensionality.
I let this initial idea guide me to setting up my canvas and palette, and I got to painting. Below, I detail my intuitive insights as I moved through the process of this art, this Godspeak.
Phase 1
The seeds that begin are not the tree that is grown, yet they are the tree, all the same. They, the seeds, make up the wholeness of the tree and act as reflections of the future right in their nascent state of being.
This painting is a process of allowing — trusting — the beauty to emerge. It’s a depiction of what happens through time. An amalgam of planning and chaos; structure and randomness, and the intermingling of familial events (represented by available colors on the palette).
Foreigners (new colors I add to the palette) enter seldomly, generation by generation, layer by layer, to merge with an ongoing familial tapestry.
It is neither about questions nor answers. It is about adaptation, emergence, trust. Being fed on what resources are available.
Being part of the beauty the whole creates, thus being beauty itself.
Phase 2
Forgiveness. Depth. Slow emergence.
A home for the muddiness, the mistakes, the trials — I mix colors on the palette with the hope for radiant beauty, but it all ends up being muddy. And even in the muddiness, I use everything on the palette. Even the muddy in context of the whole is beautiful.
Where, again, does the glorious lotus grow from?
Nature has its authentic flow, constantly making space for positive change; the making space is in the choice. Choice to see mud as ruin or mud as nourishment.
One must choose what is desired when in the flow of change.
Phase 3
I am beginning to have a better understanding of the larger picture. From this place, I can decide where it’s best to fit in — where my chosen colors on the palette for this phase are best to fit into the emerging familial tapestry. What layers of meaning and being they wish to create simply by being placed on the canvas.
Simply by existing here, in my family of origin, I, too, represent a layer of meaning and being. Nothing is for naught.
To be in contemplation while maintaining simplicity means living in the frequency of trust… one must not complicate things while still understanding the innate complexity that exists. It is a practice.
An authentic beauty is materializing; now there’s an opportunity to consciously draw out more beauty from the artwork… like the ethos of a family system. The souls that make up the system have their own unencumbered ways of being, and in symbiosis with other souls in the system, an authentic beauty materializes.
Note to be mindful to maintain authenticity and organicity and not force the first obvious beauty that seems to appear. Sinking deeper and wider into subtlety allows more permeable wisdom to emerge and be potentiated.
Phase 4
Familial conviviality…
It’s the soup we’re all swimming in.
Can’t it be fun while it’s devastating? Can’t we live the dimension of happiness while our knees are also buckling? Can’t knee-buckling also be from laughter and not only the wailing cries of despair?
There is an undercurrent that has always been about, and perhaps it was busy creating itself, structural tones to the chaos of familial conviviality, while the family was busy creating conviviality.
Colors on the palette desire to be close to color; to align with dynamism and bright expressions of Self.
Muted background shades, also becoming, desire to remain in the background.
We cannot all be the Sun.
Phase 5
In the end, existence is trial, learning, and expansion.
An opportunity to meet Self in other Selves and recognize/remember our shared primordial essence.
An opportunity to live beyond binaries of good and bad, but rather to learn to self-propagate when self is Self and not self.
Self is really Selves when selves can see individuation as an opportunity to recognize the universal that exists in the specific. And then Selves is SELF.
I AM.
We are all one spec of paint. We are all the whole painting.
We are all blood. We are all the river.
We are breath. We are air.
We are ugly. We are beauty.
We are life. We are God.
Asé
Contact me if you would like to welcome this piece of artwork into your home or art collection. 16x20, acrylic on canvas.
I am also available for intentional, soulful commissions. Share your vision with me. Allow me to be inspired by you and your story and create something that fits your home, your dreams, your vision, your aesthetic.
Peace.
