Remembering Innocence, Wonder and Magic through the language of the Heart

 

For as long as I have been painting there has always seemed to be an innocence about the work that I do. I have made some attempts to try and bring about an 'edge' to it, to make it more grown up, but none have been successful, so far.

Despite all that Life has brought before me, sadness, loss, grief, fear, all the usual suspects, the sense of wonder and magic about the cosmos and all its manifestations refuses to leave. Yes, I am regularly naive and some might say un-worldy, but it occurred to me that maybe that is not always a bad thing.

I have felt for sometime now the limitations of intellectual analysis of everything that surrounds us.  Where once I was interested in quantum physics and its shared ground with what we loosely term spirituality now I am more inclined to be in awe of the moss climbing the tree trunks. The sublime magic of  frosty branches decorated with icicles or the deer on the path that looks me straight in the eye, for one moment soul to soul with another being. Our insatiable desire to dissect things, to fix things, to understand things. To judge things. These well regarded and many times useful strategies have woven a spell that leaves our natural magic in the shadows, but I feel its time for being remembered is close at hand.

The language of the heart is the language of alchemy. Turning grief to gratitude, fear to joy, sorrow to grace. It only loves, and through that 'mind-free' love, magic and wonder is revealed, and for me that is where peace and joy is found.

Having been ill for so long, I did think that maybe the illness would change this. That it would bring more of the dark, more edginess, but it is not to be so.

Here is my first little painting of the year. A tiny mouse named Petrushkin.

Petrushkin mouse minds the hours,

He keeps them safely tucked up in bed,

And while they sleep soundly,

He walks the forest paths to fill his heart,

With tree and moss and rook,

Until divinity is in a dew drop,

And the gods whisper sweetly in the trees,

mouse-kin

soul-kin

bliss-kin

all-kin

this-kin

so-kin

no-kin