Pause Is A Necessary Condition

Pause Is A Necessary Condition

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"Pause Is A Necessary Condition" oil on wood altar, 21 x 10 x 4.5 inches.  (click on the image to purchase)
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Pause is the necessary condition of the development of all those higher purposes which make up the rational being.  […]. Not until the days of this period of chrysalis life have been painfully accomplished can he emerge a new and glorified creature, who, by spiritual transformation, is invested alike with the dignities and the duties of [being human]. - Robert Ranulph Marett ​

An overcast, brisk and drizzly winter in the PNW is a good time to pause.
 
The gloom and cold make ripe the conditions to process grief, heaviness and despair as well.  I think many of us have methods, rituals, tendencies for managing wintery emotions and thoughts.  For some, an altar - a place to rest your weariness, a place for hopeful talismans and reminders - can be part of those methods.  And so in the fallow season I sometimes create these altars.  The muse (in this case, the muse in the form of friend Thea, who was the catalyst this year) leads me there.

Fallow can mean the act of tilling the soil without sowing it.  We can mull and reflect and process and release things from the soil of our spirits and hearts without putting anything else there.  Just a clear, seeing place.  An open space for new growing things, without defining what those things are.

In our home, there are altars of a sort everywhere.  Reminders of where we've been, things we've collected along the way, relics in the form of bones or stones, odd tree branches (some carried a long way through miles of burned forest), fossils and shells.  The old keys in the first photo below were from my grandmother's house.  A buddha brought back from Thailand.  Horns and antlers from my husband's archeology days.  There really aren't rules for altars and sacred spaces - you just know what feels good when you place it there.  

I'd love to hear about your sacred spaces at home - where do you create places to pause?

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About the art:  some time ago the AI bot and I played around with a prompt something like "a woman lounging in the water" in an attempt to generate mermaids (the bot, until recently, could not create mermaids or centaurs no matter how many words you provided).  The result at the time wasn't mermaids, but instead  a host of old-timey ladies draped over the sides of pools.  Inspired by those images, I set out to create this one.  The focus here was on the horizontal orientation and the deep, dark background, so that the art merged with the tone of the wood.  The requisite 80 million layers were time consuming here - each thin layer needed a full drying time to keep the edges crisp and allow the building of shadow and light.  The final step was a coat of varnish to protect the art and allow use of the surface area for placing objects.  She is pausing, for sure.  Embracing the nap, lolling and lounging.  Yes!

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Congratulations to Terry M!  Wonder Mike chose your name as winner of the January Reader Giveaway!  Email your address to [email protected] and the studio hound will have your free original art in the post right away.  Thanks so much to all who participated, and to all the new subscribers from Bluesky!  A new giveaway begins next month. Yahoo!