Wed

I need to find

Meaning

In something

Beyond your hands

But there is

None here

To be found

So I wait

Thinking about

Fanning fingertips

Feathersoft touch

Tracing papyrus blooms

Across my hip

Etching hieroglyphs

Along vertebrae

Inch by inch

Cataloging

Each mark

Each plane

A study

How time

Has made me

More and more

Yours

.

.

.

Two weeks ago I photographed the wedding of this couple. At 81 and 84 year old, they met online and instantly fell in love. The way they love each other and how romantically they touch one another is inspiring. Finding one’s soulmate at 80 after an entire life already lived… this is the kind of small magic I always want to be a witness to.

As I work my way through my next painting, I can’t help but think about ancient Egyptian art and language. The beauty of it draws me in over and over again. We do not love papyrus paintings because the paper is smooth and pristine - we love it because of what it is. Fraying edges and rough texture. Isn’t that what we all hope to become - especially loved because time has made us into something with texture and history?

I’m currently working on a painting series that explores the time when one person decides a sign or symbol has meaning before another validates it with their own beliefs. Before it becomes iconographic or sacred. What happens when I tell you what each element means to me? Will you buy into it, will you scoff, will you forget? The space before this is where I am exploring.

These paintings are collages of elements I associate with people who have inspired me. People I don’t (or didn’t at the time) know well enough to override these symbols with memories and feelings. They are a combination of traits and interests I make into a digital composition, to become my source image. I have three on the go at the moment. They represent three different people who humble me with their brilliance, beauty, creativity, intelligence and tenacity.

There’s a special kind of faith that’s needed to believe I can finish these paintings in the way they deserve to be rendered. Two of them are halfway there, but now I’m stuck on how to progress. I need to let go of control and expectation, while also mindfully executing the aesthetic I am striving for.

Tonight I began sketching out the third in the series. Since I do not know where they will go, I am bringing the third up to the level of the other two. From there, who knows what will happen.

Perhaps we all have this kind of faith. The belief that we will figure it out along the way - that we will make the thing as best as we are able.

When I read each of your writings, images flash in my mind that eventually collage into the idea of you. It’s only when I come to know you as a good friend, that memories replace those semiotics with how it feels to be with you. The better I know and care for someone, the harder it is to see the symbols. Isn’t that interesting? I find it to be so.

Anyway, here are the three collages and paintings in progress. I would love to know which symbols resonate and what they mean to you.