Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love…Rumi
This is one of my recent paintings and I thought the quote by Rumi was apropos for describing my long-delayed return to painting after decades of dormancy. Of course, all those non-painting years were ripe with productivity but it also meant I was simply too busy to notice the undertow of what had meant so much to me back in those post-graduate, Seattle days.
But then I got sick and with my illness came a shift in my priorities, an involuntary course correction that first brought back the piano and then its historic sidekick, painting. Samuel Johnson said, “To a poet, nothing is useless,” a claim that can also apply to painting.
For me, painting is a consumptive perspective in which every mood of light, every riot of color and every unexpected composition of shapes and texture in the daily flow of life’s drama proves useful to the creative process. Sadly, my productive persona couldn’t be bothered with these artistic “distractions” but my newly restored painter persona is eternally grateful for being given a second look at the daily quantum of life’s glorious mystery that patiently awaits our engagement.
My illness is better now because l’m better doing what I really love. The shift has realigned my cosmology and architecture for navigating the suffering that comes with the human journey, a timely transition in which art became for me a vehicle for healing. I don’t think my experience was unique or uncommon.
I believe on some level all hearts are on the lookout for that one line in a poem, for that one paragraph in a story, for that one lyric or melody line in a song, for that one photograph in an exhibition or for that one painting iin a gallery that speaks to them with compassion, meaning, inspiration and hope. My hopes is that you find the one thing that triggers your definitive moment towards what you love sooner than later…
Sorry to hear you’ve been ill. I hope it wasn’t serious.
I love your painting!
i really love this painting is this painting for sale and where ??
I am a senior as well and fell in love with this painting.
elly De winne
Good Evening David:
As a Gerontologist (on my own aging journey as well) I often read and find inspiration and resonance with your posts. Thank you for sharing your insights, truth and soul…..a true balance arises after reading, absorbing & deleting all the political posts and ads posted each day. It has become a full time job lately! And once I read, respond,& then delete most the posts that I find less inspiring and often difficult to absorb (or re-read) I feel less burdened by the uncertainty & darkness that pervails during these politically dark and uncertain times. . My business and personal tagline is: Aging is a Journey…Not a Crisis…and yet the crisis seems to permeate the media, my soul and the times we are living in. ~Namaste~ Tari Muir, M.A. Gerontologist