The idea took shape, some time ago, during the passing of my father. As I helped him cross the threshold between this world and that, I wasn’t fully present here. In that time of quiet, contemplative waiting, while dangling my toes in eternity, an exchange amplified between the physicality of my creative subject and the spirituality of deep, soulful connection.
I was toiling on a large painting of an architectural detail-meets-tumultuous oceanscape. Almost an out-of-body experience, it was quiet and deafening simultaneously. I was trying SO HARD to just let go. But the trying prevented progress.
As the membrane separating this world and that world grew increasingly thin, the painting reinvented itself, in a whirling dance of tangled contrasts, until it became exactly that thing that it longed to be.
Over the last couple years, I’ve returned to the work trying to parse it, understand how I got there. But it wasn’t until I stopped trying to pin down answers that the dance returned to my heart.