Work on Paper: box full of darkness

Box full of darkness.

On page 52 of Mary Oliver’s book Thirst is her poem “The Uses Of Sorrow.” 

The first time I heard of it was in a conversation with someone about depression. I remember it because the poem’s last line felt like a crack in an idea I didn’t know I was carrying around. 

The full poem is as follows…

Someone I loved once gave me.  

A box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

That this, too, was a gift.

Actually, it was the last word…gift…that was doing the cracking. 

Sometimes, any idea that sorrow can be anything other than something to be endured…just seems like icing on a crap cake! If you know what I mean. Everything from pandemics, to pollution, to the never-ending disappointment called “politics” being all wrapped up in a bow…makes some primal part of me want to start screaming. And. Never stop.

Gratefully, some equally primal part of my 52 year old self has noticed that other things happen on this spinning planet. More and more I nod knowingly to the gift of darkness.

Look long under night skies and into the eyes of those who are tending painful endings. Beauty is out there on the far edges of great sorrow. It’s messy. But. It is. Never not there.

I’m trying to imagine that sorrow is a reflection. Like a mirror. Tilt it…this way and that…sorrow somehow shapeshifts….

Maybe into acceptance.

Maybe into meaning.

Maybe into art.

Maybe into a gift.

Just Maybe.

All this is not for the faint of heart. Getting it. Forgetting it.

Bouncing back and forth. Probably getting more and more cracks. My heart breaks.

It can take years. So the wise poetess tells me!

As an aside…

Mary Oliver makes this note under the poem’s title that says...

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem) 

Her poem literally came out of the physical reality of the darkness of sleep. Something about that makes it even more…MORE!

ps…

I just realized I had intended to write about the line A box full of darkness because it has become a thread of inspiration for this mixed media work on paper. Lot’s more on that for another time.

It could take years! Wink!

Till then here are some WIP snaps along the way.

Enjoy.

Infinite Instar: in every direction

Another piece from the Infinite Instar series.

I’ve been turning it in every direction. I’m searching for something in the chaos I just don’t know what. I’m not sure anybody really does. But…my sense is that it’s better to search than pretending in plans.

I’ve been in and out of this painting for years now. It has become so layered. So complicated. So intricate. Could be a metaphor for life? Then again everything is.

It keeps changing. In fact…just yesterday I worked on it again. Just haven’t taken the time to make a photo.

Yet!

“We adore chaos because we love to produce order.”

— M.C. Escher

New painting series: Infinite Instar

Ongoing work and notes along the way.

This is a few snaps of a painting from a series began in 2022.

I came across the word “Instar”in a Rebecca Solnit book I was reading at the time. Can’t seem to find it now in my many book piles at the moment. I’ll track it down soon I’m sure.

It’s actually a term used for insects but my brain can’t let go of it as “in-star” as being “in a star.”

Also, I’m sure they have something to do with the many sunrises I was watching that year.

An instar is a place in the mysterious in-between.

No longer Caterpillar. Not yet Butterfly.

The old skin. The old self.

About to fully detach. About to transform.

No longer what was. Yet, not what will be.

Limits on life. Borders that blur.

An infinite instar is a metamorphous without end.

An impossibility given what we know about realities.

All possibilities given what we imagine about galaxies.

All-in-finite-in-star.

The instant we remember to reverence it we also remember to mourn it, for we remember that this living miracle is a temporary miracle — a borrowed constellation of atoms bound to return to the stardust that made it. - Maria Popova

Work on Paper: nothing is a myth

Note on the post:

Please feel free to skip the words & just enjoy as a wander through a work in progress.

Or go ahead and dive in to it all…because that’s pretty much how I do what I do. Sometimes, words give. Sometimes, they take..it’s really just a mystery.

It began with water. It began with paper.

No like other myths it began with a tree.

It’s about beautiful parts unable to connect anymore.

It’s a tangle. It’s about the invisible.

About emptiness. About loss.

It’s pouring out. It’s cutting. It’s burning.

I don’t know what its story is.

I can’t find the ending.

I not sure it has one.

Sometime in August

I burn out.

I crave silence like water.

Because…

I want more

I want less

I banish distraction & ambition

is harder.

I’ll try…

No news.

No social media.

No projects.

No plans.

No art making.

Imagine…

if everything goes

something fresh

will emerge.

simple rarely is.

Silence is so loud.

Is nothing even possible?

Tell me exactly

how

does loss get lodged

in the muscle?

I mean…

in the heart.

Does anybody know?

Does everyone know?

nothing is a myth

About the Work On Paper:

I’m not sure what comes next for this elaborate…intensely labored piece.

In my mind, for a work on paper it’s the most like a “painting” I have made to date. There is something so layered about it.

It’s very slow going. It has my hands aching. It has me totally locked in. I feel like it keeps asking me to follow it.

I’m wondering…

over and over…how much loss is bearable? I mean how much can be punched, burned or cut away? Is it possible to stop…or will the paper totally disappear?

How is it that light changes everything at least for a moment?

Why so much beauty from a thing going missing? Why can I see this beauty only sometimes?

∞ another infinity of unanswerable questions ∞

If you have come this far…

through the ramble of my mind thank you for being here! In a world of sound bits & information overload it rare to find someone like you who can go the distance down a winding creative river.

ps: Some of you may already know that my father has vascular dementia. It’s been a very long journey of loss. I’ve been watching for years now as my father both disappears and endures. Each visit I look harder and harder for a glimmer of my Dad. Occasionally…there is still a soft smile but I haven’t seen his eyes open for weeks now and his words are so few. Some days it feels like loss in every direction.

I imagine this intense witnessing of loss is showing up in this artwork. Art making has always been my way of being with emotions and energies that words can never really make sense of.

There is a mystery in that bond between beauty and destruction. It both breaks my heart and makes me believe it might be the closest thing to wisdom that I know. Maybe…I’m looking for evidence of life after death. Only curious about the possibilities because…do I really want to to know for sure? I imagine that ultimate mystery is the thing that keeps creativity moving.

“Layer by layer art strips life bare. The more abstract it gets, the more transparent the air is. Can it be that the farther it is removed from life, the clearer art becomes?
”

— - Robert Musil

And, one more detail snap because the process like life…goes on & on.