Swimming is What Makes You Truly Vulnerable

"Swimming is What Makes You Truly Vulnerable" - acrylic on cradled wood panel,  11 x 14 x .75.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.


​It is the difference between bragging about swimming in the river and actually getting wet. You can never drown standing on the shore. You risk nothing. Wading into the river, embracing the current, immersing yourself in the possibilities is where courage is found. Swimming is what makes you truly vulnerable. Everything else is meaningless bravado.
- MARK NEPO

On a recent beach hike, we visited a shipwreck.  A behemoth of steel, stuck deep in the sand for over a hundred years.  The sun and waves danced and played all around it as the wreck posed and shimmered for our cameras.

As wrecks are likely to do, this one sent my mind pondering all the "dangerous things" (as my father called them) that lead to disasters and wrecks of one sort or another.  The things that cause fear, hesitation and perhaps, as Nepo wrote, standing on the shore.

Swimming is What Makes You Truly Vulnerable

I used to stand on the shore in my own life.  Some days, I still want to.  Swimming in the river of this life is both exhilarating and heart pounding - there are moments where I want to pull the covers over my head and stop being vulnerable.  And yet...the more I swim, the better I am at swimming.  The more I swim, the more confident I become in my own courage.  And the more I swim, the less I think about all the things on the shore that once kept me from going in the water.  One day, I will become the water.  And then I'll be afraid no more.

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About the art:  inspired by the shape and color of the rusty steel wreck, but lightly abstracted.  Using the requisite 80 million layers of paint, a rubber wedge and a variety of brushes, keeping the paint wet with a spray bottle and allowing it to move.  Liberal use of fingers and paper towels.