Stop Being a Glass. Become a Lake.

Stop Being a Glass

"Stop Being a Glass" and "Become a Lake",  mixed media on paper, each  10.5" x 16.5".  Available here and at Artfinder.


The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain remains…exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. Enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.

(Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening)

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This week we plunge into the pond.  Monet's Pond, that is.  With a new course from Pauline Agnew, where abstracting water and its surroundings is the goal.  Which works well for this artist, who is spending time around waterfalls, rivers and the ocean.  

It is still too cold here to actually enter the waters.  But Nepo gives us a way to metaphorically become larger containers for water than we have been before.

I am intrigued with the idea of separating pain from bitterness.   The pain will come - part of the experience of being human.  We don't like it.  We don't want it.  We can't always stop it.  But it comes.

What we can do is decide how much bitterness we want to taste with it.  I'd rather not taste the bitter.  And so I become a lake.  Enlarging my sense of things.  How large a container can I imagine for the things that  hurt?  Standing by the ocean, I think I can go pretty big with this.  

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​About the art:  using sumi ink, acrylic paint, water soluble pencils and oil pastels, creating varied marks inspired by a scene from a pond.  Changing tools frequently, moving from different directions and from place to place within the pieces.  Resisting the urge to fill in all the white of the paper.  Letting the water have its way with the medium. Letting the paper become a lake. :)

Become a Lake