Healing and growth through intuitive art
Night is coming to the desert
In the fading light
Animals show up
In a hurry
As if their working day
Begins
Legs and tails
Sharp little teeth
Soon it is hard to tell
If they aren’t really
Thorny bushes
Folds of earth
Or empty rivulets
Waiting for the floods
That may or may not come
This year
Then the stars
Open their eyes of innocence
Quietly
Pouring down on us
The essence
That we are.
Now:
Who
Do
You
Want
To
Listen
To
?
What happens here?
It looks there is wind, coming from the right and everything that we see is effected.
It is a strong wind. Little things are being blown away to the left.
If the wind goes on like this for a longer time, what are we going to be left with?
Maybe some branches will break?
Maybe the light green figure will run away? Or, will it stay all the way to the end, to see how everything else has disappeared?
The empty space will seem devoid of things to look at.
So the figure will eventually give up on trying to see physical things.
With nothing in its environment, the figure too will have no reality. With the impossibility of a contrast, how can anything be?
Aren’t we creatures of contrast?
We say: This is I and this is you or this is the world. But without a world, who are we?
And there is that grey shape that may look as if it is the thought of the figure. As I was painting it and as I had gotten to this point, something from inside of me stopped me. Enough said, it told me without words. Don’t add any more.
So the grey shape remained unfinished, as if there was no point any more in believing in what we thought was real.
When the figure’s last thought stopped before it became full, when the belief in thought and the reality stopped, what was left?
Try it out.
There is a power that makes everything be, and it comes from our thoughts. You feel it in your guts.
In time it also blows everything away. Then the last thought is never completed.
And there we are.
In this painting you can see the pain. It is in the lines, it is in the intensity of the colors, it is in the way the colored areas run away from each other, concentrating in themselves, as if the whole picture is falling apart. And you also see some environment: A horizon with two trees, a part of a cloud and maybe a fruit on a limb.
The drawing is of faces overlapping, worried and separate, in spite of the closeness, pressed into the presence of each other.
The white is like the knuckles of a clenched fist.
At some point I discovered some dirt that was somehow transferred to the paper after my hand touched some food. I erased some of it but could not get rid of it completely. Erasing vigorously leaves marks too. The solution was to place the signature on the stain. It is like placing myself on some mess that I had created, to cover it up. Here is one of the things that life seems to be about sometimes.
My artist friend H observed in my art that even when I speak about torturous pain, the paintings have some cheerfulness to them. He recommended, carefully indeed and lovingly, to express the pain more freely, and maybe there will be a physical relief from it, not to mention the psychological relief. Maybe this is why there is a bit more expression of suffering in this painting than is usually expressed in my art. Or maybe it is because I came to the table at 3 or 4 at night, when the pain made me jump out of bed, and I started to draw right there.
But I can’t escape myself. Even the suffering in my life is viewed from an aware place that is basically calm, curious and loving.
I love my friend for who he is and for how what he is, is being expressed in everything he does. And I also love myself enough to allow what-makes-me-nowadays, to express itself with all the facets that it has.
Maybe it is strange to many people that there is no full expression of the suffering in my art. Instead there is what looks like a distanced or muted expression. How can one not scream about his suffering in his art and indeed tear people’s hearts when they become witnesses to it? But this would be untrue to my experience.
Yes there is some distance when I experience being more than my body. My body shakes with pain many times, but there is the bigger me, to whom this looks like a fantastic, colorful, emotions-full, drama that I had created for myself, not knowing who I am. Yes, it is not the usual life, to have one foot in the body and another in a much freer place.
-And what if I hit you on your toes with a heavy hammer, will ask an imaginary friend?
-It will hurt.
So you still have those monsters… she says.
But I meant this to be a flower. It has some strange dark side to it. It’s true. It gives you a bad look.
And this, I meant it to be a branch, a tree, and a piece of the sky is caught up in it.
And this is some kind of an animal walking with its nose down to the ground.
Something with bad vibes is coming out from the water.
Why is one leg red?
And that long necked creature at the front, why is it looking back? Is it like a member of a gang, making sure he is not breaking a rule?
It does have some monstrous feel to it.
Or is it a colorful parade on the street?
Are they pretending to be bad?
Are they the audience for themselves?
And where am I in all of this?
I am the vibes that invite all this into my experience.
Look at the lines with all the sharp points aiming inward and outward.
Only the monsters are invited to the game today.
And what is the music in the background?
Is it quiet?
Will there be a scream soon?
Why is the sky so pale?
Can a scene like this exist?
It can, if you invite it. Can I invite something else?
Let’s see…
And how come it looks so peaceful and playful suddenly?
Like poor children, playing with dolls that they had made from barbed wire and junk? What do they dream about?
What do you dream about?
intuitiveflow 