Longing

Longing

"Longing" - acrylic on wood panel, 16" x 10".  Available here and at Artfinder.

This week in the studio, a bit of experimentation with the mesmerizing  style of Welsh artist Shani Rhys James, whose gritty and emotional portraits had me awake in the middle of the night envisioning faces in red.  Oh. Wow.

And more time with the grab-me-in-the-guts words of David Whyte:

Longing is nothing without its dangerous edge, that cuts and wounds us while setting us free and beckons us exactly because of the human need to invite the right kind of peril.  

I can stand a little peril of the right kind. :)  Let's read on:

The foundational instinct that we are here essentially to risk ourselves in the world, that we are a form of invitation to others and to otherness, that we are meant to hazard ourselves for the right thing, for the right woman or the right man, for a son or a daughter, for the right work or for a gift given against all the odds.

​Risking ourselves in the world is what artists and makers do.

You, dear readers, are bravely risking yourselves in the world.  Some of you, for a son or a daughter.  Others, for the right partner.  Many of you for the right thing (often that thing is making art or creating whatever your heart is pulling you to bring forth).    Your longing makes you brave, courageous, tenacious and bold.

Whyte says longing is a form of moving...In longing we move and are moving from a known but abstracted elsewhere, to a beautiful, about to be reached, someone, something or somewhere we want to call our own.​   Let's move from abstracted elsewhere to beautiful.  Here - take my hand. We can be brave together.

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About the painting - black gesso over a well-grained wood panel. Initial sketch with a chopstick and red paint.  Adding layers of acrylic and acrylic mixed with gesso while resisting (RESIST!  RESIST!) the urge to overly refine.  A layer of deep dark blue over the black gesso'd background to add depth and more contrast and interest.