The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
Dorothea Lange
. . .
The Q: How do we ride our buoyant force in the waves?
Facing the bombarding waves seemingly coming from all directions, I engage the core of my soul and move forward, sometimes with the rhythm force of the current, learning to enjoy the journey.
Carol Durant
“Fault Line with Parrot” by Diane Lucille Meyer
The bird gave me a good lesson in flight. He met me at the broken bridge and showed me how to lift myself over. He knew another way and I trusted him to tell me. Not with words or thoughts but by our connections to spirit. He lured me in and held me in that wonderful freedom, that splashing, soaring, playful, wall-less space.
Time speaks in my painting and tells me to follow one movement with another, one color with another. Time tells me to stay with the passage until it’s resolved; time rewards me with a glimpse of the divine when things begin to harmonize. Time composes the space of love and the image of the faces in my memories. Considering time as moments connected to moments I understand the passing, as if Time-then knows Time-now. There are embedded messages in every present moment that will speak later.
Time holds the water in the belly of my brush; time is the puddle on the surface of my paper that asks for permission to be absorbed. Time lets the water linger while drying, and there are paintings where time corrects my mistakes, rearranges the flowers in the vase, and brightens the reflections when I have long left the studio.
“Indian Paintbrush” by Simona Carini
A tuft of Indian paintbrush blooms in the fierce environment of a stretch of Northern California coast. It does not wait for a more suitable condition to materialize. It answers its call without delay.
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after Vermeer
Light on a wall,
a woman. Light—
the pour of milk, her round
forehead as she reads
where he arranged her—each
of those women—
near a window to catch the glow,
not look through.
But to the women that light means
opening out—
bellying clouds
painted on the virginals
she’s poised to play,
a stretch of river blowing.
Lifting her pen, she pauses,
tuning a lute string
listens—does it
ring true?
The seeds prick and sparkle like water,
in her cracked wheat
rising on the sill.
“Women, Windows” by Lauren Rusk, Waves: A Confluence of Women’s Voices
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