Gratitude in Autumn

Accept What Comes from the Silence / 24" x 30" / acrylic on canvas

At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost. ~Rainer Maria Rilke~

Cascade Forest / 24" x 30" / acrylic on canvas

This has been an extraordinary summer for the artist/gypsy in me. I have never felt so close to the bone of my soul life. I have traveled extensively, inside and out for the past five months. A journey that has peeled away the unnecessary and revealed the essence and interconnectedness of many places, people and things. 

Ten years ago my life was so confused and muddled I didn't think I would ever see clearly again. Today the waters have stilled and are crystal clear. My inner vision is

Violent Beauty

Violent Beauty / 24" x 40" / acrylic & mixed media on canvas / 2011

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?

and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,

and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.

~Rainer Maria-Rilke

Rilke Poem, Music and Painting

A video collaboration between Detlef Cordes in Germany and myself, here in Canada. Detlef is a talented musician, poet, writer, philosopher and thinker. I love the way Detlef combined the music, words, birdsong and urban sounds to create a distinctive pattern of sounds allowing the images of a painting in process to unfold, much as a tree unfurls it's new leaves every spring to the passing seasons.

My life is not this steep hour,
Where you see me hurry.
I am a tree in front of my background.
I am just one of my many mouths,
and the one that closes most early.
I am the silence between two tones,
which do not ease into each other lightly:
as the sound "death" likes to rise.

But in the dark interval they reconcile,
quivering
And the song stays beautiful.

~Rilke translated by Detlef Cordes