April 19, 2016 – The stillness in every painting

Listen to this post:

The radio in my car is most often tuned to KQED – the NPR station in San Francisco. I really like classical music, but I just can’t listen to it all the time – it can get tedious to me – and the other music stations are so filled with incredibly annoying commercials and too much pop music, that it’s almost as annoying to me.   I’m old and I just can’t relate to it. Plus, I do like to stay engaged with what’s happening in the world. My favorite shows are the interview shows – Forum and Fresh Air. The hosts of these shows, interview guests who are almost always fascinating to me, opening my world. And sometimes what I hear, can touch my heart or even change me.

Many of the interviews are of authors, who are on tour sharing their newly published books. A week ago yesterday, Michael Krasny, the host of Forum, interviewed Krista Tippett, who has a new book out called, “Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.” Krista Tippett is the host of a radio show called, On Being. She has a wonderful, warm voice that expresses a joyful heart and a sharp mind. I heard just pieces of the interview as I did a few errands on my way to my hubby’s office, and I can’t remember ever resonating with a guest on Forum as much. So I listened to the whole show that evening from the archive, which then had me go to the On Being website to find more.

I have the dim sense that I’ve visited this site before, and listened to one of her interviews – but I’m asking myself how I’ve never delved into the richness that is Krista Tippett’s world. Oh my goodness! This is the pool I swim in – the intersection of spirituality, identity, the frontier of our understanding of our existence and the power of story. Besides the weekly interviews, there are columnists like Parker Palmer, Sharon Salzburg and a few others who I want to get to know. I don’t know where I’m going to find the time to take it all in!

I’ve already listened to her interviews of Martin Sheen, the poets David Whyte and Mary Oliver and an episode called, “The Magic Shop of the Brain” where she interviews a Stanford neurosurgeon, called James Doty – in part – about how the brain and the heart communicate. I am able to easily split my attention between painting and listening – to music or even to people talking.  I love that I can paint and “read” at the same time. There are some paintings that I can remember the book I listened to as I painted: Faith was “The Help,” Dazzling was “The Paris Wife,” Jubilee was “The Hundred Food Journey” – to name a few. Now, I can’t wait to dive into this treasure trove of goodness as I paint. The episodes go all the way back to September 2001 – just after 9/11 – where she discusses, “Where was God?” with several – as they are described – “great religious minds.”

I know I am who I am in large part because of this compulsion in me, to understand and grow my consciousness. And to have such a source of perspectives from others, who have spent their lives deeply considering and discovering, ignites the desire in me to hear and learn more.

I took a break from writing to walk Bo this morning, before the day warms up too much. He’s a black doggy and prefers the cool of the morning. While winding up and down the hill, I had one ear bud in listening to Krista interview a poet – new to me – Maria Howe – another episode I could listen to again for all its pearls. In this conversation, they talked about two things that brought me to painting and our world: one is the ordinary sacred. Marie’s brother died of AIDS at 28. She recited one of her poems about him at the end of his life, called The Gate, about one such ordinary moment around a cheese and mustard sandwich, that had tears spill from my eyes, as I huffed and puffed up the trail.

This had me think about my painting from last summer called “Douce”, and how it started by my taking a jar that had held jam, and the last three blooming things in our drought-stricken garden last summer. I collected them and spent a short time taking pictures of it, sitting on the weathered grey fence rail in the front yard in the early evening sun. The background is the just the shadowy asphalt of the street. It’s all ordinary and – at least to me – it carries the transcendent too. When I think about it, most of what we paint is this – the beauty, or interest or whimsy from our regular lives that our attention was pulled to. Even a trip to a gorgeous garden – like Filoli a couple of weeks ago – and I zoom in to a world that is created by seeing only a very small part of it. A cluster of apple blossoms, though beautiful, is ordinary too.  Its ultimate purpose is to attract pollinating bees, so it can become fruit to feed bellies.

The other thing that I heard in the conversation, was that at the heart of every poem is silence. They even said that the heart of everything is silence. Moving this idea to our visual world, it came to me that there is stillness at the heart of every painting. Our paintings record, they document, a moment in the life of a flower or something to eat, or a patch of the earth, or a human or other creature’s face – all of which are in a state of constant change – on their way from the past heading to the future. The camera and then our eyes, brains and brushes bring that moment, the stillness of that moment, to the paper for it to live on.

It may seem that these are lofty ideas that many people don’t have an inclination towards, but for me they bring meaning to my life – to the moments that make up all of our lives. The thought of a life devoid of meaning, is bleak and even pointless. For some reason, this is bringing to mind several tender moments in the past week I had with artists in our groups – when they shared with me a bit of the burden they carry with them into our painting time. Each of them expressed how the time we spend together, takes their burdens off their shoulders for a while, as they paint. It’s so good to have that relief, but I know that our burdens are still there – present in someway in our brushes and in the gestures that make up our paintings. It is my firm belief, that we bring all of it along with us, as we do what we do – including making our artwork.

The end result then, is that these paintings are the alchemy of the ordinary sacred, the stillness of the moment that called to us, the burdens – and joys – of our lives – as well as our struggle to work with our art materials as we paint. A whole lot goes into making art – it’s no wonder we can be afraid of it! It seems good that we aren’t present to all of this all the time, or we’d never get down to it. I just hope that now and then the magic of what we are doing does sift in – and in doing so, it connects us to the silence and stillness that is in every moment – every momment that ever was. When we do, we are in touch with the eternal.

With my love,

Cara