Welcome to the blogspace!

Click on the post title to view and to leave comments. Thank you!

Published on

Freed Beyond the Telling

"Freed Beyond the Telling" - mixed media on gallery wrapped canvas, 16 x 20.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.

Women are appearing in the studio.  Pushing out from the canvas, telling stories with their eyes.  I sit quietly with them, listening with something other than ears. 

"All we want is to be freed beyond the telling of what went wrong or how we failed.  All we want is to be freed into living the one song that keeps lifting through our hearts.  Sometimes I think that what we call coincidence, what we call obstacle, what we call the miracle or surprise ---are all notes of the one song bringing us alive, throwing us into each other."     MARK NEPO,  Things That Join the Sea and the Sky

The one song throwing us into each other...echos of Hafiz (a Sufi poet) "​God and I are like two fat people in a small boat - we just keep bumping into each other and laughing" (my favorite poem of all time).
Coincidence, obstacle, miracle, surprise as musical notes of the one song.  These things that thread us together and bring us alive.  There have been some obstacles - oh yes.  But the coincidences (serendipity, synchronicity, magic) have lead to some surprise miracles that lift me into the one song and set my heart soaring.

In this painting, the layers are built and then heavily washed again and again and again.  Each washing leaving a little of the layer, but also moving some of that paint in an uncontrolled manner.  The telling of our stories, even the "what went wrong or how we failed" washes away some of the hurt but leaves a little shadow of what was, blurring into other stories until, one day, we are freed beyond the telling into living the one song.
5 Comments
Dotty Seiter - 6 years ago
wow, Jen.

that washing.

that one song.
Carl Stoveland - 6 years ago
There’s a metaphor in there for all the layers leading to the luminous quality of your beautiful painting. We are more than the sum of our parts or layers or events that make us who we are! Great work.
jen - 6 years ago
Carl! OMG! I love that. How perfect. Thank you for making the painting (and the process) seem even better to me. :)
Carol Edan - 6 years ago
Putting down, taking away... washing scrubbing... what other activity allows this sort of play!
Vocative, intense and forgiving!
jen - 6 years ago
Carol! Play it is. The very best kind. And much better than washing floors...

Author

Lola Jovan

Picture

Learn more about Lola!

Get Mail!

* indicates required

Intuit Mailchimp