Sounds of Release

you cannot give 
what you never had
your soul caves in
your mind scrambles
for a shovel

release the sounds
send them on their merry way
back to the sorrow filled houses
where music lay still
as a graveside after the weeping

send them back to the carnivals
the smoky bars
the houses of shouting
the wanting
the wanting
the gaping mouths of need

beads of sweat
on my forehead
roll down my nose
drip onto my chest
i absorb them back
into my body

Poem by Lily

Where Does a Painting Come From?

The Opening

Primordial Nature

I paint the landscape because she is a numinous being, she whispers secrets on the wind and directs attention with light. Since childhood the landscape has been my closest companion. If I abandon her at any time I feel unsettled and ill at ease. I need her presence to illuminate my voice. I am always longing to become one with her and sometimes I merge with her through painting. She is full of power and energy and as vital to me as breathing. There is a life force radiating just beneath her surface, sometimes I can see it but more often I feel it as gestures, shapes, textures and above all, as movement.
There is a dance within the landscape that my own body want to follow; rhythms, patterns and gestures all animate my brush in response to the landscape.

Lately, long thin drips of paint are an expression of her tears, because beneath the surface there is much sadness as humanity brutally rapes her forests and rivers without a thought for our interconnectedness. The landscape is not as benign an entity as we have romanticized her to be. Her tears are a warning, as she bides her time, waiting for us to return to consciousness and see how our delusional habits of her destruction are only self inflicted wounds. Her beauty is terrifying and omniscient and should she decide to become wrathful of our unconscious behavior we would soon learn where true power lies.